Podcasts gaining popularity again

I have spoken with two friend in the past week that are starting new podcasts. I found that quite odd, as podcasting was a big buzz word two years ago, I had thought that there were a couple of popular podcasts out there, but for the most part rss text was still king. Perhaps since I still do not have an ipod, or similar device in my tech arsenal, then I am not as aware of the video and audio podcasts that may get listened to or watched everyday. I still use the DVR and streaming video, I do occasionally hear an audio cast withing my netvibes feed reader, perhaps if I had a portable mp3 player I would find some good webcasts to listen to. podcast logo

This week I also see a story in one of my rss feeds (via netvibes) talking about podcasting picking up steam and advertisers are looking to step up advertising in this arena as well. I certainly hope Steve and Glen’s podcasts take off. I know Glen is looking to do a video podcast, I just hope there are easier ways to subscribe to them, currently Itunes will not let me preview podcasts without having iTunes installed on my machine, which means I can’t listen in at work, no iTunes will be installed on this system.

I think there was a movement for some time to rebrand podcasts as webcasts or something, since audio and video files put into an rss feed can be listened to on other portable devices, no need for an ipod to listen in. Perhaps there will be mix of this webcasting with you tube channels and such, perhaps there already is a way to auto-download video channels online without itunes, is anyone doing this already?

Alice Pretchet

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