Podcasting and Audio Blogs

I was watching the Culture Show on BBC3 (or was it 4?) the other night (repeat of BBC2 original showing) and they were talking about PodCasting, not mentioning but also meaning audio blogging. For any non-techies/geeks who won't have a clue, I'm talking about creating audio programmes (or in the analogy to blogs, "posts") made of music, talk, interviews, whatever - anything really, and publishing it onto webpages, usually as a regular show people can "subscribe" to with appropriate software and download ready to listen to whenever, wherever they want. Kinda like recording a regular radio show and listening to it later on, with a walkman/your hifi. A walkman (sorry, "personal stereo") is probably the better analogy what with iPods being so involved. The whole portable electronic music player phenomenon gave this idea wings although there are many other ways to do it. Many mobile phones nowadays, particularly the high end of the market can download and play mp3 audio files at reasonable quality for their size, and there are an estimated 30million portable mp3 players worldwide.

So I started looking at a few links - ipodder.org, podcasts.org and had a listen to one.

I had a thought that you could probably create one while out and about with your mobile phone too if it's got a voice recorder - or leave yourself a very long voicemail and record it later when you pick it up (gets expensive though). But proper microphones and PC sound editing software is the best way.