For anyone who loves listening to the wide variety of internet audio programming, but can't always listen to their favorite shows when they're scheduled or take the time to download them manually, help has arrived.
Known as podcasting, the technology is a new take on syndicated content feeds like RSS and Atom. But instead of pushing text from blogs and news sites to various content aggregators like FeedDemon and Bloglines, podcasting sends audio content directly to an iPod or other MP3 player.
"It's aggregating audio content, but it's taking one extra step, in that it's putting it on your device," said Adam Curry, who built the first podcasting aggregator, known as iPodder. "Not only do these devices play it, but you don't have to put it there yourself. It just happens automatically."
To get audio feeds, users simply connect their MP3 player to their computer, go online, and subscribe to feeds they want the podcasting service to provide. Audio content is then pushed from the original source to an aggregator and then to the subscriber.
To some, podcasting is one of the most exciting innovations to come along in quite awhile. They see it opening up an endlessly varied universe of audio content to anyone who wants it at any time.
"As a concept, I see it as most closely equivalent to doing for internet audio content what TiVo does for TV," said Dave Slusher, who regularly records and podcasts Evil Genius Chronicles. "These simple tools on the listener end allow people to subscribe to feeds of interest to them and automatically have the files from that feed handled for them."
Carl Franklin, the host of DotNetRocks, an online talk show for .NET developers, agreed that podcasting brings convenience of choice to internet audio that was previously only available to digital video recorder users.
"I think it's a natural evolution of content consumption, because people are busy and they don't always have time to catch their favorite shows," Franklin said. "So it's very convenient to get notified when new content is available through some sort of aggregator and automatically download that content and have it put in a place where it can be put on a portable player and listened to at your convenience."
There are already several sites listing podcasting feeds or offering variations on podcasting aggregators, such as Podcasters.org, Podcast.net, iPodderX and Curry's iPodder.org. Currently, the listings on those sites have a great deal of crossover between them, but that's likely to change.
According to the popular blogger, Doc Searls, the number of results for a Google search on the term "podcasting" is growing almost exponentially. On Monday, for example, Searls noted 5,950 such results. As of Tuesday afternoon, that number had reached 8,900, even though Google still thinks the word "podcasting" should be "broadcasting."
At the moment, the vast majority of podcast content is of the tech talk show variety, much of which would appeal only to geeks. But that's expected to change as the number of people creating audio content grows and the word spreads about podcasting.
"If this works, feels and is just like radio, then I believe it should work the same," said Curry. "Anyone who wants to sell anything or communicate through audio can use this technology."
Curry and Slusher believe podcasting will become a mainstream application fairly soon, much like RSS.
"It will not take long. Because the concept is so simple and the tools are so simple, there are very few barriers to adoption on either end," said Slusher. "It will mostly be limited by the speed at which the toolsets can get polished enough to reach widespread adoption.... I think in a year, the tools will have long been ready."
For his part, Curry thinks podcasting's tipping point is likely to be BloggerCon, Dave Winer's blogging confab, which is scheduled for November 6 at Stanford University. The gathering will include a session about podcasting.
To some however, podcasting isn't anything new.
"I've been doing a primitive version of that, more or less, ever since NPR began making its news programs available almost simultaneously with their broadcasts," wrote K.G. Schneider on her blog recently. "Still, glad to see the geeks naming it, making it a Cause, and giving it a delivery mechanism."
Podcasting enthusiasts think Schneider is missing the point.
"What makes it different is the combination of the available files, the standardized packaging and the automated handling on the listener side -- being able to approach something kind of like TiVo for audio. It's hard to overstate how much different it is when you connect up that last yard," Slusher wrote in a comment on Schneider's blog.
In any case, Curry predicts that before long, podcasting could easily become a commercial venture.
"It's not exclusive to hobbyists and webloggers," Curry said. "It could easily be used by AOL Time Warner or ClearChannel."
Indeed, Curry thinks traditional radio advertising models could be applied to podcasting and that the most popular radio show content would be an ideal fit.
"The model is there. You sit in your car, you talk on the phone or you listen on your iPod," Curry said. "So I think Howard Stern would be an excellent candidate for distributing this way."
