What is a Podcast?

What are podcasting and videocasting?
If blogs are like newspapers, then think radio and TV. Podcasts are audio files distributed online; videocasts are (brace yourself for a shock) video files. Listeners or viewers subscribe to a news feed that alerts them when new episodes are available, typically using software that automatically downloads each new file. Often, the same software then downloads the files onto a portable media player such as an iPod... and if you're wondering if that's where the name "podcasting" came from, you're absolutely right!

You probably have to be staggeringly rich and own a yacht to break into podcasting... right?
Actually, if you already own a reasonably modern computer (say, one that isn't diesel-powered), you can probably lay your hands on everything you need to create an engaging podcast with perfectly acceptable production values. And while a videocast is a little more demanding, free and low-cost tools are starting to offer the kind of features that used to be the sole domain of high-end users only a few years ago.

Okay, not rich, but don't you need to be a technical audio and video production wizard to use that obscure hardware and software?
Not any more. Many of those tools are aimed squarely at home users. Consumer software like Apple's Garageband and iMovie – which come free with a new Mac, by the way – allows you to crank out first-rate podcasts and videocasts. (Suggestions for Windows equivalents would be welcome!) As far as hardware goes, people are producing very popular 'casts with simple, inexpensive setups. (And we'll describe some of them as this resource centre grows.)