I usually don’t like to cover technology that has already been covered by the New York Times. By the time the Times gets around to covering technology, it is no longer breaking news but rather old news. But I’m going to make an exception here and cover something that made the Times about 6 months ago. I took a look into it shortly after the Times covered it, but didn’t keep up with it until now. Podcasting.

Podcasting is just like blogging, but done with audio files. Just like a Blog allows you to publish whatever you want just like a magazine, podcasting allows you to run your own radio station. With just a little bit of equipment (basically a computer and a microphone) and some basic web knowledge, you can setup your own podcasting channel. And even the web knowledge part is being reduced by services like FeedBurner who make it easy.

With a podcast feed, you have two options to get your next episode. You can either remember their publication schedule, or you can use some software and RSS to get your feed for you. If you remember from my post on RSS, you can take a guess at how I get my episode. I use a program called Ipodder (free!) that runs twice a day to check for new podcasts for me. When it finds a new one if downloads it and registers it with Itunes (it can also register it with Windows Media Player if you don’t have/like Itunes). When I sync my iPod the next time, the new episode magically appears on it.

Now don’t expect a podcast from me or Margaret any time soon. I have enough problems finding time to blog, much less creating the time it takes to record, edit, and mix a podcast episode. But I will recommend some of the ones that I listen to (or have listened to).

Probably the most popular podcast is the Dawn and Drew Show. They are really just a married couple (about my age) who talk about things in their life. But be warned: this isn’t Ward and June Cleaver talking and the FCC isn’t involved, so it sometimes get a bit raunchy and Dawn can be a potty mouth at times. But they are laugh-out-loud funny.

Now the person considered the father of podcasting is Adam Curry. He has his show “Daily Source Code” that broadcasts daily. He is really pushing the envelope here with his podcasting setup. I’ve heard him broadcast from the middle of the Atlantic at 37000 feet. He’s got a wireless setup so he can broadcast from his kitchen with his wife and kid. He recently did a broadcast from behind the wheel on his way home (which I wouldn’t recommend doing on your own).

In addition to the ones I’ve mentioned here, there are all kinds of other ones that you may be interested. You can find a directory of podcasts here, or you can just go to ipodder.org to read all about it.

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