What is a podcast? Explanation of podcasting terminology
As you begin your online career or extend your reach to a growing audience, you may be considering podcasting. This article looks at what podcasting is and explains some of the technologies in terms that anyone can understand.
Various podcast definitions are available by Googling the term. However, the one I like the most says the following. A podcast is a multimedia file that can be played on a computer, mobile device, or media player. The file itself can consist of audio or video and is usually obtained by downloading it from a site (website) set up just for that purpose. Although the term podcast is sometimes associated with a popular vendor’s device, the term podcast appeared before the device and has been used according to Wikipedia since around 2005.
Other terms used when describing a podcast are terms such as “RSS”, “podcast client”, “aggregator”, “blog”, “syndication” and “digital audio files”. Looking at the definition and usage of these terms along with more descriptions of podcast usage should help us understand what podcast means when it comes to using podcasts to convey a message.
First of all, RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication, defined as a web-feeding technology that automatically detects when the content of a site is updated and, through feeds and subscriber aggregators, distributes it to another site or a player of digital content. A web feed allows feed readers to automatically come to a site for new content and then post updates on that new content on another site. This provides a way for users to keep up to date with the latest information posted on different sites. A feed reader is a software package that allows you to read the code in which RSS feeds are written. This can give you a central place to read updates from news sources, blogs, email, and more. Feed readers are increasingly being included in browser software or as part of custom home pages.
A podcast client is the software that is used to access and download podcasts. Podcast clients are also known as media aggregators, programs designed to automatically access an online file or source and download the associated video or audio file. An aggregator (also known as a feed reader) is a website or software program that collects and displays web content such as news headlines, blogs, and podcasts from multiple website sources on a single website (location). It uses RSS or other types of feeds to find content and allows you to subscribe to feeds, allowing new content to automatically download when available.
Blog is a shortened version of the word weblog, material published by the owner of a website that contains posts of all kinds of content, including images, texts, video, audio and even links to other sites. Often times, a blog will allow reader participation through comments or guest posts. Syndication is the extraction of content from an RSS news feed to a website, making the information on a website available (usually in summary form) for a wide range of uses, such as RSS feeds. Syndication also makes news updates, blog posts, and podcasts immediately available to a web audience.
Finally, digital audio files for our purpose refer to a file containing digital audio that is defined as follows. Analog audio signals are converted to digital samples, and each sample is assigned a value in a range of 65,536 possible values (16 bits). This converted analog signal is saved in file format and can be played on many digital audio players, such as a CD audio player or, if converted to the correct format, an MP3 player, media players, etc.
Now, with these basics about the world of podcasting, you have a foundation to begin researching how podcasting can serve your needs.