HOW TO RECEIVE PODCASTS

In order to create your own podcasts you first have to know how to receive podcasts. Podcasting is a great way to get your audio on the Internet. It's geared toward longer broadcasts, lectures, audio books, etc.

If you already know how to receive podcasts you can go directly to creating podcasts.

When you download a podcast you can play it on your computer or move it to a portable player, the most famous being iPod and the new iPod Mini. However, you can play podcasts on any portable MP3 player. You can even play podcasts on newer car stereos that will play MP3 files.

The idea behind podcasting is combining Internet radio with Tivo - a great selection of radio style broadcasts, whether music or talk radio shows, with time shifting. Combine that with an iPod or portable MP3 player, and you have the ability to listen to what you want, when you want and where you want.

So let's get started.

In some cases a web site will have the option of listening to a podcast or downloading a podcast directly from the site. However, in most cases it's easiest to subscribe to a podcast feed.

You need software to subscribe to and receive podcasts on your computer; podcast receivers are often called aggregators or, more often, podcatchers. Many people, as I mentioned, use iPod's, which is where the term podcasting came from. They mostly use Apple's iTunes as their software to download both podcasts and music. iTunes is free podcatching software available for both Apple computers and Windows PC's.

There are several other podcatching programs available for free: the one I use is Juice (which used to be called iPodder). Another free one is called Doppler, which I haven't used.

I've included a video tutorial on how to receive podcasts using Juice. I show you where to find iTunes, but go through step by step procedures for installing the Juice podcatcher and how to find and download podcasts.

How to make your own podcast>>