So you may have heard of podcasting and are wondering what it's all about?

In short podcasting is similar to radio except your not tied to a schedule or reception location,  you can listen to podcasts whenever and wherever you want! The other great thing is most of these podcasts are also free.

While getting radio and audio has been available thru the internet for many years what makes the podcast format liberating is that you can listen to audio without being connected to the internet at the same time! Traditional internet audio worked using streaming technology, essentiantially you listened to the audio content as it was being downloaded. There was no way to save this audio stream to your computer for later playback, instead you would have to reconnect to the intetrnet and get the audio restreamed to you.

The podcast format is not streaming based and instead involves you downloading the whole audio file to your computer for you to playback as many times as you want and you don't have to be connected to the internet after the initial download. Not only that you can now easily play these podcast audio files on portable music players and listen to them where ever you are, be it while joggiing, commuting on the ferry or driving in your car.

The most popular portable music player for playing podcasts is the Apple IPod. However, by no means is it the only option. There are several comparable players made by Creative, IRiver, Samsung, and many others. What all these players have in common is they support the audio format known as MP3 (mpeg layer 3). The MP3 format has revolutionized audio storage since it can shrink audio storage size to a tenth of the size as compared with traditional CD format.

So now that you know what a podcast is how do you go about getting something your interested in listening to? A good startining point is none other than our own ABC. The ABC has embraced podcasting whole heartedly and has already made a significant number of it's programs available via podcasts.

Other national  public broadcasters such the BBC, CBC and especially NPR are other good starting points for podcast programs. However, the podcast phenonemna is not limited to large existing broadcasters. There are thousands of podcasts created by individuals recording from their own home. Since there are so many such podcasts a number of podcast directories have started up that list them on a single website. Some of the better known podcast directories include Podcast Alley, Odeo, ITunes. Theses directories organize podcasts by generes much like a radio or TV guide as well as giving you the ability to perform searches for specific titles or subjects.

Before you start trying to access all the podcasts that are out there you should take the time to install some podcatching software. While it is possible to manually download and store podcast files individually this task will quite quickly get overwhelming as you may be interested in a number of different podcasts each of which may be releasing new programs on a daily or weekly basis. Podcast management software can simplify this for you, most will even go an check for new episodes and automatically download them for you. Some popular podcast software inlucde Apple's ITunes and Juice Receiver. ITunes is advantagoues if you have and Apple IPod since it designed to integrate with it. ITunes also integrates with the ITunes music store which features a large podcast directory and makes it easy to subscribe to podcastrs.

So now you should have a pretty good idea of what podcasting is all about and can started exploring and listening for yourself.

In the next edition of Podcast Ponderings we'll take a look at a number of different portable music players for listening to podcasts.