iPod is a portable media player developed by Apple. There has been a revolution in the media industry, which now also includes the web. Podcast companies are springing up everywhere. These are jumping on the podcast popularity bandwagon. Adam Curry automated the process of downloading and syncing audio files to iPod. What followed was the RSS 2.0 specification that was used to deliver information about podcasts. RSS files are a way of publishing meta information about content. Podcast is the application of RSS to audio files.

Podcast basics can be summarized in a few steps

o Creation of audio content in MP3 format and publication on a web server.

o Publish an RSS feed containing RSS news that refers to the audio content published on the web server. The RSS element provides meta information, file name, description of the file, and an RSS attachment which is the URL of the audio file.

o iPodder is used to search for new versions of the news service. The iPodder identifies the URLs of the audio file and downloads and syncs them with a media player.

o Users listen to the downloaded audio file “on podcast” when it is convenient for them.

Podcasting has spread quite quickly due to the rapid adoption of the iPod and other MP3 players.

Your pods emit

Since you know the easy steps of a podcast, creating a podcast yourself is one way to access the web. Create your audio content like audiobooks, music, radio, interviews, or even sermons. Whatever program you want to broadcast. If you have a Macintosh, a free music pod streaming option is GarageBand, or you can search for pod streaming software and choose.

For the best quality, save the file in the highest quality available in whatever application you use. It will be easy to edit and reuse the saved file and convert it to the de facto podcast standard: MP3. The software may ask you about bit rates. Use the minimum setting to achieve good results. It could be 48K to 56K mono and if you are looking for better quality stereo then 64K or higher stereo option would be best. Once your files are in MP3 format, you must save them to the web server directory. Putting all the files in a particular directory makes it easier to manage.

Now you need to create your podcast news feed, which is an RSS file that links to your MP3 file. The RSS file is a simple text file and you can use your text editor to create an RSS feed. However, blogging programs and other applications allow you to automatically generate new feeds. All you need to do is create an element for each audio file and use the URL of the content as an attachment. In case you are using a text editor, download a sample file and replace the contents of those with your own. Save your file with a .rss or .xml extension. You can use an RSS file to contain all your podcasts sorted from newest to oldest.

Publishing your RSS feed is transferring this * .rss file to the server and validating it using an online validator. If the news service is valid, it is ready to be published on the web. Then you add your site to the podcast directory for people to come and visit your site. Branding your podcast by adding logos, sound effects, and adding it to the correct podcast directory will add to the podcast benefits for professional pod launchers.