What is a Podcast?

Podcasting is delivering audio content to iPods and other portable media players on demand, so that it can be listened to at the user's convenience. The main benefit of podcasting is that listeners can sync content to their media player and take it with them to listen whenever they want to. Because podcasts are typically saved in MP3 format, they can also be listened to on nearly any computer.

Podcasting in 4 Steps (from Podcasting News)

1. Publishers create audio content, and post it to a web server, typically in MP3 format.
2. They publish an RSS file (newsfeed)  that contains RSS news items that reference the audio content. Each RSS item provides meta information about an audio file, such as the file's name and description, and contains an RSS enclosure with the URL of the audio file.
3. End-users regularly check for new versions of the newsfeed, using an application like iPodder. When a new version is found, iPodder reads through it, identifies the audio file URLs, downloads them and syncs them to a media player.
4. Users listen to the "podcasted" audio file when it is convenient.