Podcasting
THIS WEEK NetSpeak explores the features of Podcasting, a Net phenomenon that is fast becoming popular among savvy netizens.
We know that RSS based news feed technology, which lets a web site owner easily distribute the summary details of the latest content published on his site, is capturing new frontiers. The emergence of a wide range of useful applications based on RSS feed is rather surprising. It is being used in varied applications that include pushing latest weather information (RssWeather — http://www.rssweather.com/dir/Asia/India/) to user's desktop, extracting relevant job openings available at various job sites (RSSJobs — http://www.rssjobs.com) and for sharing calendar (RSSCalendar — http://www.rsscalendar.com/rss/) with one's clients/friends. The latest entrant in this array of applications that embrace RSS technology is the `audio on demand' or podcasting.
Relevance of audio content
Apart from being useful for people with reading disabilities, you will find many life situations in which audio content has more significance than text. A teacher can record her instructional materials as an audio file in MP3 or other suitable format and host it on the Web so that her students or anyone from the Net can download/listen to them whenever they want.
A product manager can create/upload an audio version of his new product's features so that anyone interested can download it.
A project co-ordinator can record his discussions with the members of different groups and keep it on-line so that it can be shared across everyone involved in the project. Regular Skype sessions can be easily recorded and stored on the Web.
Some of you may wonder what is so great about recording audio content and hosting it on the web. Of course, lots of audio content in MP3 and other formats are already available online. But, the factor that makes all the difference is the RSS technology that allows you to attach an MP3 file to an RSS feed as an enclosure.
The process of hosting the audio content as an MP3 file on a web server and linking it to an RSS feed is called podcasting. By creating an RSS feed for your audio content, you make them available to its users automatically. Just like web authors who push the summary of the latest content to their customers with news feeds, a teacher can push the audio version of her latest lecture series automatically to her students. An instructor can deliver the content anytime she likes and learners can listen to it at their convenience.
Whereas blogs allow you to present your ideas in text form, podcasting enables you to present ideas through your voice. That is, with podcasting you can bring in a little bit of human touch to the whole communication process and make it much more brilliant/effective.
One aspect that makes podcasting a popular phenomenon is the availability of simple tools that enable even an ordinary netizen to create a podcast with ease. For recording content you need only a microphone and a recording program like TotalRecorder (http://www.highcriteria.com/) or the free open-source recording/editing program Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/). That is, technology is not a hindrance for you to become a podcaster. But, of course, you need the ability to create content that is required by somebody out there.
Podcast clients
We use news aggregators for subscribing to news feeds and automatically downloading its content on to our desktop. Similar tools are in place for subscribing to podcasts feeds and to automatically download the feeds' content. This author uses the aggregator Nimiq (http://www.nimiq.nl/) for this purpose.
After installing Nimiq, add your favourite feeds on to it using the `Subscription' option. Once the feeds are added to the aggregator, it will automatically start downloading the latest audio content posted on your favourite services.
Another popular aggregator that can be deployed for this purpose is the free open source multi-platform product, Ipodder (http://ipodder.sourceforge.net/ index.php).
Yet another podcast feed reader worth a trial is the free software Doppler (http://www.dopplerradio.net/). A highlight of this program is the `Import' option that lets you import feeds from a file or from an on-line aggregator like Bloglines.
Popular Podcast feeds
In a short span of time tens of hundreds of podcasters have surfaced. Lots of podcasts that deal with a wide array of subjects are available on the Net. Here is a list of some of the notable podcast feeds/resources:
Podfly, the podcasting portal (http://www.podfly.com/mambo/);
Wikipedia page on Podcasting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast);
Ipodder.org (http://ipodder.org/), a site that hosts links to several podcast feeds/materials related to podcasting.
Itconversations — yet another podcast service provider (http://www.itconversations.com/rss.html)
The podcast directory, Podcast.net (http://podcast.net/), is an excellent resource for spotting relevant podcasts.
Dictionary service with `Google Suggest' touch
As mentioned in an earlier column, the online service `Google Suggest' (http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en) presents you several keyword alternatives from its database of popular keywords as soon as you start typing a query word into its input box.
The online dictionary service, `ObjectGraph Dictionary,' is a product similar to Google Suggest. As you type an English word in its input box, ObjectGraph will immediately show several words that start with the letters already punched into the box.
Along with each suggested word the service will also display its meaning/definition. Now, if you select the button labeled `Thesaurus,' the service will immediately list out several synonyms for the suggested words. For more details: http://www.objectgraph.com/dictionary/.
On-line unit conversion service
Want to convert length measured in millimetres to centimetres/inches/feet/yard or temperature measured in Celsius unit to Fahrenheit/Kelvin... or energy in joules to calories/electronvolt/watt hour?
Check out the on-line conversion service (http://www.onlineconversion.com/) that lets you convert units for a wide range of entities that include temperature, force, energy, power and currency.
J. Murali
Email the author at: jmurali@gmail.com
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