Sat, 01 Oct 2005
Podcasting Hacks
Jack D. Herrington, Podcasting Hacks, O'Reilly
This will tell you pretty much all you need to know about
podcasting including the basics of sound recording. As such,
it is more of a manual than a hacks book, but it can still be delved
into in a random way to yield all kinds of interesting
information. If you're starting from scratch, then this is as good
a place to go as any and reading straight through will be
rewarding.
When Mstation is out about we quite often have to explain
what a podcast is, even to people you'd suspect would already know.
A podcast is usually an mp3 audio file which is tagged in
RSS 2.00 format (which adds an enclosure tag). The original idea was
that they would be played on iPods or similar but they can just be
downloaded and played on anything that will handle it, an
ordinary computer with a soundcard, for instance. The RSS 2.00
feed is added to a blog or auto generated with a script and the
feed is subscribed to by people with "podcatchers" like iPodder
or iPodderX. These programs automatically download new episodes
as they become available.
The whole idea of the thing was to bring broadcasting to
anyone who wanted to try it -- no government licences to worry
about and no big, expensive studios to buy. Grass roots voices
could be heard without the filters of corporate agendas, or
government regulation (so far). None of that guarantees
quality, wisdom, or fairness, but then neither does the other
system. In any case, it's a big, new, and interesting world
and you could easily be a part of it if you liked.
Oh, and by the way, Mstation podcasts can be found here.
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pre Dec 04 reviews are here