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Q: What's podcasting?
A: According to Wikipedia, "Podcasting is the practice of making audio files available online in a way that allows software to automatically detect new files and download them." Technically, this is accomplished using RSS 2.0 news feeds to provide information about a collection of audio files in MP3 format. In common use, podcasting is often used to refer to independent audio shows that can be downloaded from the internet.

Q: What's cool about podcasting?
A: Podcasting lets anybody with a microphone, a computer, and an internet connection publish audio shows that can be listened to by people anywhere in the world. Because the barriers to entry are very low, podcasting is rapidly becoming a popular way for people share audio shows. Podcasts are free and can be automatically downloaded to portable media players, so you can listen to them whenever it's convenient.

Q: Do I need to have an iPod to listen to podcasts?
A: No. The first podcast clients were designed to subscribe to audio shows, automatically download them and sync them to iPods. As podcasting has evolved, podcast clients have become available that work with most portable digital audio players. Many podcast sites support downloading shows directly from the site, and many directories support playing podcasts directly.

Q: Do I need special software to listen to podcasts?
A: No. Many podcasters and directories let you listen to podcasts as streaming media, directly from the site. Podcasting clients are used to streamline downloading podcasts and copying them to portable media players.

Q: Where can I find podcasts?
A: The most popular places for finding podcasts are the directories at iPodder.org, PodcastAlley, and Podcasting News. There are many other podcast directory sites. Many podcast applications also include a list or directory of podcasts.

Q: Who invented podcasting?
A: Podcasting is based on capabilities built into the RSS 2.0 specification, which was developed by Dave Winer. Adam Curry catalyzed the podcasting concept in September of 2004, when he released a script that automatically downloaded audio files referenced in RSS files.

While there are many precedents for Curry and Winer's work, they put the pieces together and popularized the idea of podcasting. Because of this, they are generally considered the "podfathers" of the podcasting community.

Q: Do I need to use a Mac?
A: No. You can create and listen to podcasts using Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux podcasting software.

Q: What are some of the top podcasts?
A: There are several ways to rank podcasts, and depending on how you rank them, different podcasts come out on top.

• There are several sites that review podcasts. As reviewers become established, they may become an effective way to learn about new podcasts.

What is RSS?
RSS files are text files that contain information about things available on the internet. For podcasting, RSS files are used to syndicate information about a podcast "channel" (the show as a whole), and also individual podcast episodes. The article Understanding RSS News Feeds discusses how to use them for podcasting.

Contains information from the Podcasting FAQ.