Computers and Internet

With the rise of podcasting, a number of individuals and
organizations are finding that podcasting is a excellent way
to circulate information, from music and sit-com
shows to talk shows, even podcast news. CNET is one
of the groups that is distributing a news podcast . CNET,
an online technology site, naturally created a niche
distributing a tech news associated podcast . CNET's current
podcasts covered such topics as viruses created to attack mobile
phones, problems within Google's software, China's web
restrictions and the "Great Firewall of China", and the
FTC's attack on spyware .

These news items were
distributed in a sound bite called an mp3 file that is
downloadable to a listener's computer for listening
whenever they wish. Because these files were accessible
directly from CNET's site, the majority of them are
shared through the use of an RSS file. An RSS file is a
small piece of XML coding that is downloadable by
programs designed to interpret it. These programs are called
podcast clients, and the user can input the web address of the
RSS files that hold the content on the broadcaster. The
broadcast will contain links to the media files of the podcast,
and are programmed to download the new updates automatically.

More sites than CNET are finding that podcast news is
an exploitable technology. The British Broadcasting
Corporation podcasts some of it's programs, as well as
the US radio network NPR . The NPR, because its work
is created by a variety of interest groups, treats
podcasts differently from show to show. The NPR show
"This American Life" distributes a podcast of the show
through a site named audible.com, that allows feed
listeners to subscribe to the feed for a nominal fee and
download the show . The NPR Hourly News Show, on
the other hand, shares a mini 5 minute broadcast that
summarizes the news for free. Since the NPR is taking a
radio show and converting it into a file that is
downloadable by the consumer, little is lost in the translation.
The sound is intended to relate the whole story, and so
podcast subscribers are able to treate the podcast as
nothing more than TIVO for the radio. ABC's podcast
of the evening news show Nightline, on the other hand, is
simply the sound track from the television show. This
has been one of the criticisms of the Nightline podcast,
because by merely stripping the sound from what is
designed as a television show, much information is not
given to the users. Listeners have problems telling who
is who because they miss the visual cues that were
supposed to be there, and there is no truly easy way to
convert the shows. For this exact reason, some talk shows
have been moving from audio podcasts to video ones.
They can take the video information directly from the
show that is broadcast, lower the visual resolution to
shrink the file, and circulate it online as a podcast .