Podcasting

If you haven't heard the term already, get ready. "Podcasting" is an amalgam of the term broadcasting and iPod, Apple's extremely successful portable music player. Podcasting involves creating Internet broadcasts (small aural segments typically in MP3 format) that other users can download and play at their convenience. Akin to time-shift recording of a TV program with a PVR (Personal Video Recorder, the Canadian equivalent to TiVo) for playback later, podcasting is a delivery channel that puts control in the ears of listeners, allowing them to play back the broadcasts on their time, at their convenience, from any location they want to take their MP3 player.

Contrary to the name, you do not need an Applie iPod to play podcasts. Any MP3 player will work for podcast audio fies in MP3 format. However, expect that video formats will also be podcast in the not-to-distant future -- if it isn't happening already.

Perhaps given my 30-something age -- and my lifestyle which involves single parenting -- I am not as tied to my iPod as some of the younger single friends that I know. Nevertheless, having owned an iPod for some time now, I love the convenience of portable music and carrying the bulk of my music collection in one small lightweight appliance. Recognizing that I often miss parts of the morning radio show on my drive into work, the idea of being able to play back my local Ottawa morning program (or from New York, Paris, or Hong Kong) on my schedule, at my convenience, at any location I choose, certainly strikes an appealing chord.

Podcasts aren't just limited to personal music lists and radio programs. Podcasts of all topics and sorts are popping up. The CBC has a podcast pilot project happening including podcasts of its popular Quirks & Quarks. In theory -- and knowing the Internet, likely in reality too -- podcasts can exist on any subject matter of interest -- indiviudal users' music, an accountant's tax advice, a professor's lectures, a radio or TV station's programming, whatever. Given the nature of the Internet, expect to see a broad range of podcast content to meet your interests, no matter how common or unusual.

Whether it's meeting a market need or simply an extension of the self and our inclination towards self-promotion, podcasting is obviously an extension of the success of blogging and the "everyone's-a-publisher-on-the-Internet" phenomenon. By allowing ourselves the opportunity to create, compile, and share a piece of ourselves -- our thoughts, music, interests, and preferences -- perhaps we feel that we are informing, if not educating, the world about us. Of course, expect a rush of enterprising individuals to find ways to capitalize on the craze.

Podcast future watch: Watch for web sites and new podcasting technology based around vertical listening, allowing users to choose collections of podcasts on like topics, whether it be literature, music, pop culture, taxes, technology, or more nefarious subject matter.