1. Podcasting 101

2. What is Podcasting? The term “Podcasting” is a portmanteau word derived from “iPod” and “broadcasting”. On the production side, it's a media file (such as an MP3), an index file, and a web server. On the client side, it's a podcatcher – a piece of software that downloads new podcasts, and an audio player. Confused yet?

3. But first... ● What podcasting is not... ●....live radio. ●....a bunch of mp3 files on a server ●....something you need an iPod for ●....iTunes U

4. So what is it? ● An open, freely implementable standard not tied to any specific piece of hardware or software ● It's like TiVo or a smart VCR for audio – Whenever a new program is produced to which you've subscribed, the podcatching program downloads it. It also keeps a log of what you've already listened to.

5. How do you make them? ● What you need on the production side – A reasonably modern computer with a sound card and/or USB port, plus a microphone ● Mac, Windows, Linux – it doesn't really matter ● An Internet connection ● An audio recording/manipulation program like Audacity, capable of making MP3 files ● A web server to upload the files, and some way of generating the XML metadata file

6. What's an MP3 file? Consider an audio CD. It can contain roughly 70 minutes of audio. But if you were to take that audio off the CD, it would easily be 700MB – 800MB in size. MP3 is a way of making sound files smaller by throwing away parts of audio that the human ear can't usually hear.

7. MP3 and bitrates MP3s have a bitrate. A higher bitrate means better audio quality, but larger file size. A lower bitrate means lower quality with a small size. 128kbps is considered CD quality. If, say, we were recording only voice, we might want to use a lower bitrate as the human voice's range is less than a typical piece of music. Remember VCRs? EP/SP/SLP? Essentially the same.

8. Okay, so what's XML? ● Like a library index card contains information about a book in the library – author, subject, length of book, and so on – the XML file contains information about the MP3 files in your podcast – author, subject, length of file, etc. ● 95% of the time you will not need to worry about this.

9. How do I listen to them? ● Grab yourself a podcatching application – iTunes – Juice – FireAnt – bashpodder –... a zillion more ● Go to http://www.podcastalley.com and look through shows http://www.podcastalley.com