Thomas A Webb wrote:
Out of ignorance of the mac-redmond branded offerings, a question:
I followed the link below and listened to the content [it's a pretty cool idea]. The content is in the form an mp3; is that what's inside an iPod? Any of you Linux users out there can do pretty professional production work with Audacity [an open source studio level production tool for audio that produces a wide variety of formats] and if iPods can play your stuff, it's a ->NO<-budget way to get into this.;-)
Yes, iPods are just like other MP3 players in most respects; it's just got a cool, sleek interface and accompanying software that's made it extraordinarily popular.
Podcasting is basically the next step in the convergence of audio/video webcasting, MP3 players and blogging. Blogs are generally made of text, and bloggers use RSS feeds to let other Internet users subscribe to their blog. Some bloggers then began to post audio and video on their sites as well -- including recordings equivalent to radio programs, with their own theme songs, hosts, guest interviews etc. But if a user wanted to listen to these programs, he or she previously would have to go to the blogger's website and click on the link to download the program, then listening to it on their computer.
So former MTV VJ Adam Curry got together with RSS pioneer Dave Winer to develop a way for RSS feeds to recognize links to multimedia clips, including MP3 audio clips and Quicktime videos. This allowed them and others to develop software like iPodderX, which is a cross between iTunes software (used to manage your iPod MP3 player) and an RSS newsreader (used to subscribe to RSS feeds, like Bloglines.com or Amphetadesk).
This convergence of MP3 management software and an RSS newsreader is what led to the birth of podcasting. Using software like iPodderX, I can now subscribe to blogs that produce podcasts (ie, MP3 radio programs). The iPodder software captures the RSS feed of the blog, automatically downloading the latest podcast audio files for me to listen to on an iPod (You could also just download it to your computer, but that's not as cool or tragically hip as listening to it on your iPod). So rather than visiting someone's blog to listen to their audio program, my computer captures the audio file automatically and downloads it, so the next time I'm commuting on the train or whatever, I can listen to it.
There's still a bit of a learning curve when it comes to podcasting. You need to know something about blogging and RSS feeds for starters, plus you'll have to be somewhat proficient at creating and editing audio files. Right now I consider myself to be self-apprenticing podcaster, learning from other podcasters by observing their methods, then testing it for myself. Just for fun I may post some informal podcasts over the next week during the holidays, but hopefully by January I'll be able to incorporate podcasting into my blog and into DDN as a new format to publish articles about the digital divide. Stay tuned - to my RSS feed, at least. :-) http://www.andycarvin.com/index.xml
ps - for more about RSS feeds, please check out my recent DDN article on the subject: http://www.digitaldivide.net/articles/view.php?ArticleID=68
-- ----------------------------------- Andy Carvin Program Director EDC Center for Media & Community acarvin @ edc . org http://www.digitaldivide.net Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com ----------------------------------- _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
