Page 1 of 3 Podcasting is either the Next Big Thingtm, or the buzzword of the day ... destined to go the way of the dodo. But all signals are pointing to podcasting being huge. With the FCC breathing down the necks of traditional broadcasters, many are looking for alternate venues to transmit their content. While some big names are moving to satellite radio (a costly venture to be sure), the rest of us are left behind on this big ball of dirt, rocks, and water.
Enter the podcast -- the internet's media "broadcasting" format. While it is mostly being used for audio right now, there's nothing stopping the podcast from linking to other media such as video. This opens up tons of opportunities for media publishing that you have the opportunity to be a part of right now ... and the technical requirements for creating a podcast are tools that you, as web developers, already have/use (mostly).
Yes, podcast feeds are really nothing more than a regular RSS 2.0 feed. The only difference is the inclusion of an additional tag ... the enclosure.
<enclosure url="http://www.communitymx.com/mp3s/someMP3ThatDoesntExist.mp3" length="18107" type="audio/mpeg" />
Actually, the enclosure element was already a part of the 2.0 spec, it's just that no one really used it before this. Basically, the enclosure tag's URL parameter just points to a media file; Once the podcast feed is available, anyone can subscribe to and listen to the podcast using a podcast downloader, which is described later on in this article. Upon encountering a new entry in the feed, it subsequently downloads it and places it in a directory of your choosing.
As an example of how this might be useful, you can set it up so that newly downloaded podcasts are automatically copied to your iPod or other media player. That way, when the publisher makes a new show available for download, it will automatically show up in your playlist.
To learn how to consume a regular RSS feed in Coldfusion, check out the first in a series of articles by Arman Danesh on the topic.
Well, in a way, nothing ... but consider the fact that the media files are hosted on a web server, and the podcast feeds are in XML. The average web developer is intimately familiar with such things, providing the opportunity to offer podcast hosting/management as a service to customers.
Keywords
Podcasting broadcasting enclosure feed mp3 audio media
