What we know as a podcast had its beginnings
in the creation of MP3 files that could be downloaded and played
on the iPod device developed by Apple Computer. The release
of the iPod encouraged people to share their music with others.
They then realized that they could create, upload, and download
information other than music. Some iPod users reverse engineered
the device and loaded various types of firmware or operating
system software. Other users decided that they would share
sound files to be played on the iPod, since the technology
for distributing such files already existed. RSS feeds provide
a way to generate machine-readable files, which could then
share data between servers and users. Many blogs used RSS to
keep their readers up to date on blog posts. Some visionary
podcasters realized that they could enclose links to sound
files inside the RSS feed and download these files to a computer.
The iPod podcast became increasingly popular as this change
in RSS feeds was implemented. Podcasting became a common way
to share files, and users began to view podcasting as a way
to become, essentially, radio-show hosts or DJs. Then software
was developed that would automatically check the RSS feeds,
extract links to podcast episodes, and download the files.
This software is called a podcast client.
By the time all this was happening, podcasting had expanded
far beyond Apple’s iPod device. Developers had even discovered
ways to use PlayStation Portable gaming systems as a podcast
player. While this was more difficult than downloading a podcast
to an iPod because of PSP’s different file format, more
PSP podcasts began appearing on the Internet. Podcasting also
expanded into use by individuals who didn’t have iPods,
but who viewed podcasting as a very convenient technology for
receiving news, music, and entertainment over the Internet.
Now, iPod podcasting remains in use, but fewer people subscribe
to podcasts in order to get portable media files. This still
represents an attractive feature of podcasting, but it is overshadowed
by the use of podcasting as a content delivery system. Podcasting
is currently associated with a large and growing number of
audio and video blogs, for example. With these offerings, content
is not delivered via posting, but through media files that
are uploaded to the blog. These types of blogs, and podcasting
in general, benefit from the constantly decreasing cost of
broadband Internet connections and the growing number of people
who have high-speed access to rich online content that includes
multimedia files.
Article
Source: http://www.articlecube.com
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