Podcasting

What is Podcast?

A podcast is a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers with ".mp3", Or you can say it is a audioblog delivered using RSS(Really Simple Syndication). They have a similar format to blogs, with entries catalogued by time and date.The only difference is the presentation, which is oral as opposed to visual.The host or author of a podcast is often called a pod caster.The main advantage of Podcast over traditional online radio- which is streamed over the Internet in real time -is that they can be transferred to portable device such as MP3 player or iPod.

Though podcasters web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their content, a podcast is distinguished from other digital media formats by its ability to be downloaded automatically, using software capable of reading feed formats such as RSS or Atom.

For course WWW-290 I used Feedburner.com for Podcast and to recording created MP3 files using Audacity. Audacity is a free/open source, cross platform digital audio editor, which has nice features like Importing and exporting MP3 ,Editing via Cut,Copy,Paste (with unlimited Undo),Multi-track mixing, Digital effects and effect plug-ins. and many more.

Using audio in blogs is called Audioblogs. There is usually a title and brief description, and linked audio file. Usually audioblogs are MP3 format,but they can be also in .Ogg Vorbis or .wav formats. A group of audio bloggers started to use RSS enclosures with their audioblog posts and a radio like content format. Audioblogs that use RSS are technically known as podcast.

A Video blog, sometimes shortened to vlog, is a blog that comprises video Or you can say in the way that audio blogs focus on sound, video blogs focus on video. Regular entries are typically presented in reverse chronological order and often combine embedded video or a video link with supporting text, images, and othermetadata. Vlogs also often take advantage of web syndication to allow for the distribution of video over the Internet using either the RSS or Atom syndication formats, for automatic aggregation and playback on mobile devices and personal computers. Vlogs are generally five to ten minutes in length and feature posts like cooking lesson,videos of local festivities, short films, family events and hands-on product reviews.

Podcasting is an automatic mechanism whereby multimedia computer files are transferred from a server to a client, which pulls down XML files containing the Internet addresses of the media files. In general, these files contain audio or video, but also could be images, text, PDF, or any file type.A consumer uses a type of software known as an aggregator, sometimes called a podcatcher or podcast receiver, to subscribe to and manage their feeds.

Podcasting is becoming increasingly popular in education. Podcasts enable students and teachers to share information with anyone at anytime. An absent student can download the podcast of the recorded lesson. It can be a tool for teachers or administrators to communicate curriculum, assignments and other information with parents and the community. Teachers can record book talks, vocabulary or foreign language lessons, international pen pal letters (podcast pals!), music performance, interviews, debates. Podcasting can be a publishing tool for student oral presentations.