Podcasting

I’m excited by what I’m reading about podcasting. Ok, excited is a little strong. Ritalin-controlled excited is more accurate. The potential for greatness is there, but the landscape is pretty desolate so far. Once more interesting podcasts pop up, then I’ll be really excited.

Podcasting is the term used for being able to automatically download stuff (songs, radio shows, etc.) from the Internet to your iPod (by which we mean any popular, large-capacity personal MP3 player, by which we mean an iPod). This is done with a news aggregator that knows what to do with RSS enclosures.

I hope this becomes wide-spread. I’d love to be able to get feeds of NPR shows that I could carry with me and listen to all day, or save up for a road trip.

If you’re interested in finding out more, Engadget has a good overview. I’m working on an article about this for the next eMonitor and I’ll post about that when it’s done.