Podcasts

A lot of people listen to a lot of podcasts, but there are still a lot of people who have no idea what podcasting is all about.

A podcast is an episodic series of digital audio or video files which a user can download and listen to. It is often available for subscription, so that new episodes are automatically downloaded via web syndication to the user's own local computer, mobile application, or portable media player.

Podcasting was  first known as "audioblogging" back to the 1980s. The ability to download bigger files via broadband internet and the arrival of portable digital audio playback devices didn't arrive until the early 21st century and that is when podcasts became podcasts.

There were many devices that allowed you to hold music and other audio files. The iPod was the biggest seller and gave part of its name to the shows that you downloaded. Podcast(ing) is a portmanteau of "iPod" (the Apple brand of media player) and "broadcast."

RSS feeds and other podcatching software (for the iPod it was iTunes) allowed you to subscribe to a show and have episodes automatically download to your device.

Back in 2004, I told people that it was "like a VCR or DVR for the radio." That was what first attracted me to it. I could subscribe to radio programs that I liked but couldn't always listen to when they were originally broadcast.

Downloaded music was always far ahead of podcasts and software like Napster made music downloads (legal and illegal downloads) incredibly popular.

But podCASTING, like broadcasting, is all about the subscription services provided. That aspect goes back to RSS, a portable player and a download system. One was developed at Compaq Research as early as 1999 or 2000. Called PocketDJ. In 2001, Replay Radio (later Replay AV) was a DVRish recorder for Internet Radio Shows.

iTunes was released in early 2001 and the iPod was released late that year and they certainly gave podcasts a big boost.