podcast

Sometimes it takes a while, but the New York Times eventually gets there.

Last Thursday's Circuits section had a nice story, by Cyrus Farivar, about podcasts, the new new thing.

In a nutshell, people record stuff onto the internet, then other people listen to it via computer or iPod - or other MP3 player - download.

But mostly via iPod; 92% of the market currently... amazing. But I digress.

Me, I like the idea, because it's one more step toward bookofjoeTV, 24/7/365.

But it certainly isn't something I could do; I mean, even though Adam Curry, the ex-MTV VJ, has created a program to make it easy to listen to podcasts, it's way over my head.

I offer XML syndication of bookofjoe, but I haven't a clue how it works or what it actually does.

My stalwart technical engineer, PW, said it was a good thing, and put it on the site.

So I'll just observe the whole podcast phenomenon from a distance, through heavy lenses - at least for the time being.

Curry said, "We've made it easy now so you can receive podcasts without being a techie, and that's the big thing here."

Not quite, Adam, but you're moving in the right direction.

When I can turn on my iPod and tune into a podcast, just like that, then it'll be ready.

Here's the Times story, followed by a sidebar story on how to actually tune in to podcasts.
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New Food for IPods: Audio by Subscription

Tucked away in their old farmhouse in Wayne, Wis., surrounded by dairy farms and cornfields, Dawn Miceli, 28, and Drew Domkus, 33, sit in their living room most nights and talk to each other as they normally would, cracking jokes and enjoying life as a young married couple.

But a few hundred people get to listen in on a half-hour of the conversation from a distance, on computers and portable music players.

They do so by way of a podcast, a new method of online audio distribution that has hundreds of amateur broadcasters springing up on the Internet.

There are podcasters in California, South Carolina and Connecticut, with others as far afield as western Canada, Australia and Sweden.

Though most podcasts tend to reflect their technologically oriented audience, newer shows are being created with topics like veganism and movie reviews.

Even conventional broadcasters are being drawn to the medium, which allows programs to be played at a listener's convenience.

The unscripted "Dawn and Drew Show," one of the most popular podcasts so far, is recorded in the living room of Ms. Miceli, an artist, and Mr. Domkus, who provides technical support for an office building in nearby Milwaukee.

They play off each other like Abbott and Costello, with Mr. Domkus as the straight man and Ms. Miceli as the joker, continually cracking jokes and making off-the-wall comments (and sometimes venturing into sexual subject matter).

"I'm like that homeless person on the corner that just rants no matter who's listening," Ms. Miceli said.

"I forget that Drew's recording this online. Sometimes people will write us, and I sit back and say, 'How do they know that?' And then I go, 'Oh, it's on the Internet.' "

While Internet-based recorded audio is not new, podcasting combines audio with an online subscription technology known as R.S.S., or Really Simple Syndication.

To keep up with a multitude of Web sites, users can pull together their reading material, or feeds, in one place using software called an R.S.S. reader.

In late August, Adam Curry, 40, a former MTV host turned entrepreneur, wrote a program allowing automatic downloads of new audio shows using R.S.S.

The shows can be played on a computer or transferred to a portable MP3 player, like an iPod - hence the name.

"That's where the big 'Oh, wow!' factor comes in," Mr. Curry said by phone from his home in Belgium.

"Now you just subscribe, and if at some point you don't like it, you just unsubscribe. They've had this stuff out there, but there's no way to get it regularly to make you a listener."

Mr. Curry's "Daily Source Code," a two-month-old show mainly on technology-related subjects, has inspired other podcasters to follow his lead.

He came up with the idea for podcasting nearly four years ago, but it wasn't until he spoke soon thereafter with Dave Winer, an early blogger and the inventor of R.S.S., that Mr. Winer was able to modify R.S.S. so that it could support enclosed audio files.

This works in much the way that e-mail messages can have attachments.

Most podcasters are amazed at the amount of attention that the new phenomenon has generated.

"I haven't seen this much buzz around a single word since the Internet," said Carl Franklin, 37, who teaches computer programming courses in New London, Conn.

Mr. Franklin has had a recorded Internet-based radio show for the past two years called ".Net Rocks!," which is aimed at programmers, and last month he was able to expand it into a podcast.

He attributed the newfound excitement to the fact that there is now a convenient way to reach a specific listening audience.

"Your potential audience is the entire world," Mr. Franklin said.

"So if you have content that has specialized interests, you can pull in 100,000 listeners. You can sell targeted advertising. You can have a better relationship with your audience and have a big enough audience to justify your existence."

Though radio broadcasters may have a large audience to begin with, some have turned to podcasting as a way to increase the number of listeners.

KOMO in Seattle and WGBH in Boston have taken some of their regular radio shows and made them available as podcasts.

Tony Kahn, 59, the producer of "Morning Stories" at WGBH, whose show is available once a week for download as a podcast, said he was amazed at the number of new listeners his show had reached and, in a way, interacted with.

"People are basically passive, and so one voice counts a lot and is deeply respected," Mr. Kahn said.

"To know that there are 10,000 people who have downloaded - that, to me, is a huge number in terms of people responding and saying, 'I'm interested in this, and it means something to me.' "

Though few podcasters have reported audiences that large, Mr. Curry estimated that among the 300 podcasters worldwide, thousands of people were either listening to or producing broadcasts.

Mr. Curry said that while he had created an easy way to receive podcasts, he hoped that the process of creating them would be simplified soon.

"We've made it easy now so you can receive podcasts without being a techie, and that's the big thing here," Mr. Curry said.
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'Tuning In' to Podcasts

To listen to a podcast, you need a computer with an Internet connection and a podcasting software program, or aggregator.

A popular one is iPodder, a free download for Windows, Macintosh and PocketPC at www.ipodder.org.

Similar programs are available for Linux.

The next step is to select a feed on the iPodder site, copy and paste the Web address into iPodder, and click on the Add Feed button.

Click on Check for New Podcasts, and wait until the files have downloaded.

If you are downloading several shows with large file sizes, it may take some time, particularly with a dial-up connection.

If you use Apple iTunes, it will automatically create playlists from the downloaded shows. Shows can be played in iTunes or transferred to a player.

IPodder.org offers an explanation of podcasting.

Related sites include www.podcast.net, which offers a podcast directory and downloadable software; and radio.blogware.com/blog/Podcasting101, which provides tips on creating a podcast.

Podcasts include:

THE DAWN AND DREW SHOW
A humorous 30-minute talk show from Dawn Miceli and Drew Domkus, a Wisconsin couple (www.dawnanddrew.com). New episodes nearly daily.

DAILY SOURCE CODE
The original podcast, mostly about podcasting and other new technologies, from Adam Curry (live.curry.com). New episodes nearly daily.

MORNING STORIES
Short, personal tales with Tony Kahn on WGBH, the Boston public radio station (www.wgbh.org/morningstories). New episodes on Fridays.

.NET ROCKS!
A show about the .NET programming language and related topics by Carl Franklin and Rory Blyth (www.franklins.net/dotnetrocks). New episodes on Mondays.

REEL REVIEWS
Film reviews by Michael Geoghegan, a cinephile from Newport Beach, Calif. (www.mwgblog.com). New episodes every few days.