What is Podcasting
Podcasting is the distribution of audio or video files, such as radio programs or music videos, over the internet using either RSS or Atom syndication for listening on mobile devices and personal computers. A podcast is a web feed of audio or video files placed on the Internet for anyone to subscribe to, and also the content of that feed. Podcasters' websites also may offer direct download of their files, but the subscription feed of automatically delivered new content is what distinguishes a podcast from a simple download or real-time streaming (see below).
While the name was primarily associated with audio subscriptions in 2004, the RSS enclosure syndication technique had been used with video files since 2001, before portable video players were widely available. Atom, a recently developed web syndication format, supports rich media content by design. In fact, any file with a URL, including still images and text, can be delivered via a web feed.
Use of "podcast" to describe both audio and video feeds seemed natural to some users, while others preferred to reserve the word for audio and coin new terms for video subscriptions. Other "pod-" derived neologisms include "podcasters" for individuals or organizations offering feeds, and "podcatchers" for special RSS aggregators with the ability to transfer the files to media player software or hardware.
Podcasting's essence is about creating content (audio or video) for an audience that wants to listen when they want, where they want, and how they want.
What is RSS
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an XML-based format for sharing and distributing Web content, such as news headlines. Using an RSS reader, you can view data feeds from various news sources, such as CNN.com, including headlines, summaries, links to full stories.
How do I access RSS
RSS/News Aggregators (also called Readers) will download and display RSS feeds for you. A number of free and commercial News Aggregators are available for download.
Many aggregators are separate, "stand-alone" programs; other services will let you add RSS feeds to a Web page. Yahoo! users can add RSS feeds to your My Yahoo! page; to make this easier, you can click on the "Add to My Yahoo!" button to the right of each link above.