Podcasting For Dummies, 4th Edition

Chapter 1

Getting the Scoop on Podcasting

IN THIS CHAPTER

Finding out what podcasting is

Creating a podcast

Finding and subscribing to podcasts

Sometimes the invention that makes the biggest impact on our daily lives isn’t an invention at all, but the convergence of existing technologies, processes, and ideas. Podcasting may be the perfect example of that principle — and it’s changing the relationship people have with their radios, music collections, books, education, and more.

The podcasting movement is actually a spin-off of another communications boom: blogs. Blogs sprang up right and left in the early 2000s, providing nonprogrammers and designers a clean, elegant interface that left many on the technology side wondering why they hadn’t thought of it sooner. Everyday people could chronicle their lives, hopes, dreams, and fears and show them to anyone who cared to read. And oddly enough, people did care to read — and still do.

Then in 2003, former MTV VeeJay Adam Curry started collaborating with programmer Dave Winer about improving RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication) that not only allowed you to share text and images, but media attachments which included compressed ...