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A podcast is a media file that is distributed by subscription (paid or unpaid) over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on mobile devices and personal computers. more...

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Like 'radio', it can mean both the content and the method of syndication. The latter may also be termed podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.

Though podcasters' web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their content, a podcast is distinguished from other digital audio formats by its ability to be downloaded automatically using software capable of reading feed formats such as RSS or Atom.

History

The concept of podcasting was suggested as early as 2000 and its technical components were available by 2001, then implemented in the program Radio Userland. In 2003 regular podcasts started showing up on well-known Web sites and software support spread.

Name

The editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary declared "podcasting" the 2005 word of the year, defining the term as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player". The name has aroused some controversy for implying one needs an iPod to listen to podcasts. In fact, a podcast can be any sort of audio file. Some alternate names have been proposed such as the more neutral "netcasting" and "blogcasting". Some of these name-changing efforts were the result of confusion over cease-and-desist letters sent by Apple to companies using terms similar to 'iPod' in their product names. However, the Apple Trademark Department has stated that Apple does not license the term 'podcast' or object to its generic usage. None of the alternate terms has yet received as wide a use as 'podcast.'

Mechanics

The publish/subscribe model of podcasting is a version of push technology, in that the information provider chooses which files to offer in a feed and the subscriber chooses among available feed channels. While the user is not "pulling" individual files from the Web, there is a strong "pull" aspect in that the receiver is free to subscribe to (or unsubscribe from) a vast array of channels. Earlier Internet "push" services (e.g., PointCast) allowed a much more limited selection of content.

Podcasting is an automatic mechanism whereby multimedia computer files are transferred from a server to a client, which pulls down XML files containing the Internet addresses of the media files. In general, these files contain audio or video, but also could be images, text, PDF, or any file type.

Read more at Wikipedia.org