Podcast - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A podcast is a series of digital media

Digital media

Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital form. It can refer to the technical aspect of storage and transmission Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital (as opposed to analog) form. It can refer to the technical aspect of...

files

Computer file

A computer file is a block of arbitrary information, or resource for storing information, which is available to a computer program and is usually based on some kind of durable storage. A file is durable in the sense that it remains available for programs to use after the current program has finished...

(either audio

Digital audio

Digital audio is sound reproduction using pulse-code modulation and digital signals. Digital audio systems include analog-to-digital conversion , digital-to-analog conversion , digital storage, processing and transmission components...

or video

Digital video

Digital video is a type of digital recording system that works by using a digital rather than an analog video signal.The terms camera, video camera, and camcorder are used interchangeably in this article.- History :...

) that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication

Web syndication

Web syndication is a form of syndication in which website material is made available to multiple other sites. Most commonly, web syndication refers to making web feeds available from a site in order to provide other people with a summary or update of the website's recently added content...

. The word replaced webcast

Webcast

A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand...

in common use with the success of the iPod

IPod

iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...

and its role in the rising popularity and innovation of web feed

Web feed

A web feed is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it. Making a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation, which is performed by an aggregator...

s.

The mode of delivery differentiates podcasting from other means of accessing media files over the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

, such as direct download link

Direct download link

Direct download link , alternatively simply direct download, is a term used within the Internet-based file sharing community. It is used to describe a hyperlink that points to a location within the Internet where the user can download a file...

, or streamed

Streaming media

Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...

webcast

Webcast

ing. A list of all the audio or video files currently associated with a given series is maintained centrally on the distributor's server as a web feed

Web feed

, and the listener or viewer employs special client

Client (computing)

A client is an application or system that accesses a service made available by a server. The server is often on another computer system, in which case the client accesses the service by way of a network....

application

Application software

Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...

software known as a podcatcher that can access this web feed, check it for updates, and download any new files in the series. This process can be automated so that new files are downloaded automatically. Files are stored locally on the user's computer

Computer

A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

or other device ready for offline use, giving simple and convenient access to episodic content. Commonly used audio file formats are Ogg Vorbis and MP3

MP3

MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

.

As discussed by Richard Berry, podcasting is both a converged medium bringing together audio, the web and portable media player

Portable media player

A portable media player or digital audio player, is a consumer electronics device that is capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, video, documents, etc. the data is typically stored on a hard drive, microdrive, or flash memory. In contrast, analog portable audio...

, and a disruptive technology that has caused some in the radio business to reconsider some established practices and preconceptions about audiences, consumption, production and distribution. This idea of disruptiveness is largely because no one person owns the technology; it is free to listen and create content, which departs from the traditional model of 'gate-kept' media and production tools. It is very much a horizontal media form: producers are consumers and consumers become producers and engage in conversations with each other.

Academics at the Community, Journalism & Communication Research group at the University of Texas at Austin

University of Texas at Austin

The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...

in the USA are proposing a four-part definition of a podcast: A podcast is a digital audio or video file that is episodic; downloadable; program-driven, mainly with a host and/or theme; and convenient, usually via an automated feed with computer software.

Name

The term "podcasting" was first mentioned by Ben Hammersley in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

newspaper in a February 2004 article, along with other proposed names for the new medium. It is a portmanteau of the words "pod"— from Apple's iPod

IPod

—and "broadcasting

Broadcasting

Broadcasting is the distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio visual medium. Receiving parties may include the general public or a relatively large subset of thereof...

". The name may be misleading, as despite the etymology, it has never been necessary to use an iPod, or, indeed, any other form of portable media player, to use podcasts; the content can be accessed using any computer that can play media files. Use of the term "podcast" predates the addition of native support for podcasting to the iPod, or to Apple's iTunes

ITunes

iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....

software. To avoid a term suggestive of "iPod", some use the term netcast instead of podcast, such as the TWiT.tv podcaster Leo Laporte

Leo Laporte

Léo Gordon Laporte is an Emmy Award winning, American technology broadcaster, author, and entrepreneur. A former resident of Providence, Rhode Island, he now lives in Petaluma, California with his wife Jennifer and two children, Abby and Henry....

(though the older term is also used in the broader sense of any internet-delivered realtime media transmission).

History

Podcasting began to catch hold with the public in late 2004, though during the 1998 – 2001 dot-com era there were multiple "podcasts". Many individuals and groups including Dawn and Drew of The Dawn and Drew Show, Kris and Betsy Smith of Croncast and Dan Klass of The Bitterest Pill contributed to the early emergence and popularity of podcasts. Former MTV

MTV

MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

VJ Adam Curry

Adam Curry

Adam Clark Curry is a broadcasting and Internet personality well known for his stint from 1987 to 1994 as a video jockey on the music video channel MTV. In the mid-1990s, Curry was a World Wide Web entrepreneur and one of the first celebrities to personally create and administer a Web site...

is credited with coming up with the idea to automate the delivery and syncing of textual content to portable audio players
. The first application to make this process feasible was iPodderX, developed by August Trometer and Ray Slakinski. Since the 1930s there have been radio talk shows and news programs. Today, through the evolution of the internet capabilities, along with cheaper hardware and software, audio podcasts are doing what was historically done through radio broadcast stations.

In June 2005, Apple released iTunes 4.9 with native support for podcasts. While this made receiving podcasts more convenient, it effectively ended advancement of the podcast medium by independent developers. To add to the cooling factor, Apple issued Cease and Desist orders to many podcast application developers and service providers for using the term "iPod" or "Pod" in the name of their product.

Trademark applications

February 10, 2005, Shae Spencer Management LLC of Fairport, New York

Fairport, New York

Fairport is a village located in the town of Perinton which is part of Monroe County, New York. Fairport is a suburb east of Rochester. It is also known as the "Crown Jewel of the Erie Canal"...

filed a trademark application to register podcast for an "online prerecorded radio program over the internet". On September 9, 2005, the United States Patent and Trademark Office

United States Patent and Trademark Office

The United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia,...

rejected the application, citing Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

's podcast entry as describing the history of the term. The company amended their application in March 2006, but the USPTO rejected the amended application as not sufficiently differentiated from the original. In November 2006, the application was marked as abandoned.

As of September 20, 2005, known trademarks that attempted to capitalize on podcast include: GodCast, Podcast Realty, GuidePod, Pod-Casting, MyPod, Podvertiser, Podango, ePodcast, PodCabin, Podcaster, PodcastPeople, PodShop, PodKitchen, Podgram, GodPod and Podcast. By February 2007, there had been 24 attempts to register trademarks containing the word "PODCAST" in United States, but only "PODCAST READY" from Podcast Ready, Inc. was approved.

Apple trademark protections

On September 26, 2006, it was reported that Apple started to crack down on businesses using the acronym

Acronym and initialism

Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations formed from the initial components in a phrase or a word. These components may be individual letters or parts of words . There is no universal agreement on the precise definition of the various terms , nor on written usage...

"POD", in product and company names. Apple sent a cease and desist

Cease and desist

A cease and desist is an order or request to halt an activity and not to take it up again later or else face legal action. The recipient of the cease-and-desist may be an individual or an organization....

letter that week to Podcast Ready, Inc., which markets an application known as "myPodder". Lawyers for Apple contended that the term "pod" has been used by the public to refer to Apple's music player so extensively that it falls under Apple's trademark cover. It was speculated that such activity was part of a bigger campaign for Apple to expand the scope of its existing iPod

IPod

trademark, which included trademarking "IPODCAST", "IPOD", and "POD". On November 16, 2006, the Apple Trademark Department stated that Apple does not object to third party usage of "the generic term" "podcast" to refer to podcasting services and that Apple does not license the term. However, no statement was made whether Apple believes they hold rights to it.

Community podcast

A community podcast is a collaborative podcast set up to support multiple contributors podcasting through generally simplified processes, and without having to host their own individual feeds. A community podcast also refers to podcasts that allow members of the community (related to the podcast topic) to contribute to the podcast in many different ways. This method was first used for a series of podcasts hosted by the Regional Educational Technology Center at Fordham University

Fordham University

Fordham University is a private, nonprofit, coeducational research university in the United States, with three campuses in and around New York City. It was founded by the Roman Catholic Diocese of New York in 1841 as St...

in 2005.

Phonecasting

Phonecasting is a portmanteau of telephone

Telephone

The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...

and podcasting, and simply means recording

Recording

Recording is the process of capturing data or translating information to a recording format stored on some storage medium, which is often referred to as a record or, if an auditory medium, a recording....

and listening to podcasts with a phone. Traditionally, podcasters would require a microphone and recording software to create their programming. Phonecasting replaces the microphone with a phone. The recording software is replaced by the recording service and a dial in number to call and record to. Podcast audiences simply dial up podcast shows on demand from their phone. Phonecast recordings are often saved directly to a website phonecast channel, so listeners can use a computer web browser or subscribe via a provided RSS feed to download/listen to new episodes.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Name

History

Trademark applications

Apple trademark protections

Community podcast

Phonecasting

See also

External links