Podcasts Are Hot

I have received a bunch of questions about our new “podcast” feeds, which we started back in May. Let me try to answer some of them here since podcasting seems to be growing like wildfire.

A podcast is simply an audio program stored in a digital format that can be played on a computer or portable music player, like an iPod (that is where the name “podcast” came from). There are thousands of podcasts available today; some feature music, others are talk shows with a bewildering array of topics. Our podcasts are weather forecasts, usually 1 to 2 minutes in length, that you can hear at your convenience. One of the best parts about podcasting is that the audio files automatically download to your computer; you really don’t have to do anything. Then, when you sync your portable music player with your computer, the audio file transfers to that device as well. Even though our podcasts are only one month old, we have discovered we have hundreds of users.

Podcasting will be even more popular now since Apple’s iTunes program added support for podcasting early this week. Apple said yesterday that people have subscribed to over one million podcasts since the new version of iTunes was released three days ago. Seems like everyone is scrambling to get on the bandwagon.

You can hear our podcasts directly on your computer by following the link provided on the blog (we have a morning version and an afternoon version, scroll down to hear them), or if you have a podcast receiver program like iTunes or iPodder you can get the file loaded automatically with our RSS feed (yep, RSS will be another subject I will write about here soon; if you are not using it now, you will be soon. Everyone is jumping on the RSS bandwagon too).

If you do have a podcast receiver on your computer, use this RSS feed for our forecast podcasts:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Weathertalk

That is also the same RSS feed for this blog, it works for both blog posts and podcasts.

Like I have been writing about in this space in recent days, the times are a changin’… and changin’ in a hurry!