Monday, April 20, 2009

Podcasting

I first heard about podcasting when I was taking a marketing class in college. We discussed using podcasting as a marketing tool, specifically as something to get people excited about the ability to listen to your ipod in your car. It sounded interesting, but this was before podcasting became relatively mainstream, and the concept that this was something that everyone could participate in was lost on me, and I pretty quickly lost interest.

A year or so later, I was really into finding cool stuff on itunes, and the ease with which you could download podcasts, and for free, made them slightly more appealing than I had originally thought. For a while, I was subscribed to the New York Times headlines podcast, and that's how I would get me news. And while it was cool that it downloaded automatically to my computer every morning, the portability aspect, downloading podcasts to my ipod to take with me, wasn't really something that I was interested in. I would listen to the news from my computer in the morning while I was getting ready for class. Listening to a program produced by a large corporation, while remaining in one location doesn't seem to go along with the point of podcasts. I could just as easily have been listening to the news on the radio.

I think that the glories of podcasting continue to be somewhat lost on me, because I've never really been in to talk radio. I much more of a visual person, so I was more excited to hear that people are doing video podcasts now. I also still don't feel a need to be able to walk around and listen to a podcast. If there was a podcast that I wanted to listen to, I think I'd be just as happy listening to it off my computer. I can also appreciate that podcasting in a preferred alternative to mainstream radio because it allows for more creativity, more options of what to listen to, and does not get restricted by the FCC, but I have satellite radio to fill those needs.

I don't mean to sound so skeptical about it, I can totally see the merits of this technology and how this would be right up someone's ally, unfortunately it's just not mine. I really like that because podcasts are downloadable, it's made radio much more persistent and achievable for the average person. This has been done with television with DVR and the internet, giving people the ability to refind and rewatch something rather than experience it only at an ascribed time, and podcasts can due that with radio. Also, I like the contributive culture of it, and the fact that anyone can contribute. That being said, I've had a bunch of trouble with Audacity this week, not being able to record. Also, I'm not sure that I understand RSS feeds, but hopefully I'll figure it out in the podcasting workshop, so that can start contributing too.

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