ipod (podcast)

[agent4]

Hi whats is podcast do i have to pay for it.

cheers

[fo3nix]

Have you heard of RSS, or feeds, or syndication? All the same thing really when it comes to websites. Basically, say you read the news from the BBC website every day, as well as a few other sites. Well, BBC and the other companies give you a free "feed" (often they give it an orange button with 'RSS' on it, sadly), which is just the raw information, but without any of the extra stuff that normally appears on the web page like links and adverts and things.

Then you can use a feed reader (also called a feed aggregator) to grab those feeds with the latest news on them, and show them all in one place. The best thing about these though is that they're always being updated with new news or content. And the new stuff automatically gets sent to you when you need check the news with your feed reader.

A podcast is the same thing, but instead of text to read like the news, they send you music as a feed. The first guys that did it (Adam Curry, et. al.) were using an iPod, hence the first part of the name. The latter part, "cast," comes from the fact that now that they're sending you music to listen to that gets updated with new shows and things, it's kind of like broadcasting, like radio.

One of the main places to get them is through the iTunes Music Store (http://www.apple.com/itunes if you don't already have iTunes), and they're free.

Further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting