Luke Melia

personal

December 1, 2004

The Podcast Petri Dish

I’ve been sampling some of this podcast thing. My primary listens have been Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code, American Public Radio’s FutureTense, some DotNetRocks, and the occassional Morning Sedition from Air America.

In a nutshell, the way it works is that you use a client like iPodderX to subscribe to some podcast feeds and then the podcast tracks get downloaded and moved into iTunes behind the scenes automatically in the background. Each time you sync your iPod, you get the latest podcasts from the feeds you’ve subscribed to.

Tonight, I added a handful of new feeds and listened in the kitchen (via AirportExpress – yay awesome wedding present!) while making gingered apple squash soup and all-natural chocolate chip cookies. I can highly recommend Coverville‘s Thanksgiving Day show (an hour of Beatles covers from various artists) and Lawrence Lessig’s session from BloggerCon III.

Podcasting is a young phenomenon. The technologies are in rapid flux, though it’s worth noting that it’s built primarily on open standards. The technical shoulders the upstart stands on are RSS and RSS aggregators, which themselves have yet to become well-known even among many casual bloggers. The New York Times ran a story on podcasting and the BBC just aired a piece as well.

It’s fun to watch the culture sprout up around podcasting, as with lots of new web/net technologies over the past several years. This time, though, we get to hear the voices that go with the handles.

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LukeMelia.com created 1999. ··· Luke Melia created 1976. ··· Live With Passion!