Podcasting

Development

The technology underlying podcasting was less than a decade old when this volume went to press. As a concept, podcasting developed out of many bloggers' desire to include audio and video clips in their otherwise text-based blogs. That growing demand led to technical experiments necessary to create the means for podcasting starting in the late 1990s. Two people are especially credited with creating and promoting the means to bring the idea to reality. They built upon the RSS (eventually dubbed “Really Simple Syndication”) software first developed for Netscape in 1999, and later modified by others.

Adam Curry (who had been a video DJ on the MTV cable network from 1987 to 1994) promoted the use of audio in blogs and a means to make them easy to access. He promoted the use of modified RSS software as an “aggregator,” a kind of automatic “news reader.” This is either client software (housed on individual computer disc drives) or a web application which aggregates (or gathers) syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs (videologs) in a single location for easy viewing. Curry developed some of the first podcast examples—and is often called the “podfather” by aficionados.

Curry approached software programmer Dave Winer to develop a means of helping users stay current when podcasts were changed or otherwise updated. Winer undertook to improve the underlying RSS software to make finding current pod-casts far easier for those lacking deep computer experience. Working with his own ideas combined with those from others, Winer had developed RSS 2.0 by early 2001 with “enclosure” technology, a software means of attaching multimedia (audio or video) content to RSS feeds. Those enclosures or attachments would enable creation of audioblogs (or what we now call podcasts). Additionally, RSS “narrators” were developed to provide an added service, converting aggregated text feeds into audio recordings one could hear rather than read.

The developing service still lacked an agreed upon name, though several had been suggested. The term podcast first appeared in Britain's Guardian newspaper, in a February 2004 story. Creation of the term is credited to reporter Ben Hammersley who in writing his piece used “pod-cast” as one synonym for audioblogging or amateur Internet radio. The new term stuck and was soon widely adopted, though it caused some inadvertent confusion in the marketplace. Many still assume an Apple iPod is required to receive podcasts—which is not the case, as any MP3 player or Internet-connected computer may be used.

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