Blogging For Dummies®

Chapter 14. Saying It Better with Podcasts

In This Chapter

• Finding out what podcasts are

• Evaluating the equipment and tools needed for podcasting

• Finding fun audio files to include in your podcast

• Getting your podcast onto the Web

At this point, you've set up a blog and sampled what life is like for the average blogger. Maybe you've chosen what it is you'd like to talk about, written a few posts, and have hit that publish button more than once. Seems almost easy, doesn't it? Of course, you need to do quite a number of technical things, but after everything is set up and working properly, writing your thoughts and publishing them on the Internet is simple! How could it get any more challenging?

Enter the podcast. Basically, a podcast is either a video or an audio file that's published on the Internet for people to download and listen to or view. This is normally done using blog software but publishing a podcast can be done in various ways — it's just easier when you already have a blog to use! The audio podcasts are a lot like radio programs, and the video podcasts are comparable to short films.

The production process for a podcast is (in theory) simple: You go out into the world, record a video or some audio, edit it on your computer, and then upload the files to your blog for release onto the Internet. The files are then downloaded by your blog's readers, who can still leave comments and interact with your blog in the usual way.

Intrigued? There's no denying that podcasts are attracting ...