The Mossberg Solution talks about podcasts and the newest iTunes feature.
But text blogs are yesterday’s news. The hottest new trend in personal online content creation is something called a podcast, essentially a short personal radio show or audio blog. They can be downloaded and played back on a computer or a portable music player like Apple’s iPod, whence the genre draws its name.
Podcasts range from slick productions offered by big media companies and amateur broadcasters; to clever and entertaining offerings from smart, undiscovered talent; to crude diatribes and snooze-inducing lectures by people the mainstream media proved wise not to hire. Some are just talk, some include music. Some sound like they were recorded on a 1971-vintage RadioShack cassette recorder, others — even from amateurs — are studio-quality.
These audio blogs, once the province mainly of techies, took a big step toward the mainstream last week when Apple began offering thousands of them, free, through its market-leading iTunes music store and iTunes music software. Anyone can submit a podcast for distribution through iTunes, and any iTunes user can download it. The company doesn’t charge a penny for listing or downloading podcasts.