Contacts
of interest
page
As engineers today we all find ourselves facing increasingly long hours to fulfill the everyday activities of our jobs. At the same time, we are pressed by the threat of technical obsolescence to keep up with the rapidly expanding technology. Fortunately, we do have the meetings held by our various Technical Society Chapters. Unfortunately, these meetings cover only a few topics, and are not always scheduled at a time, or place, that we can all work into our busy schedules. So how do we find the time to keep up? One method of satisfying this need is the podcast.
The name podcast grew out of the craze for portable mp3 players led by Apple Computer and their iPod. The iPod, and similar devices, allows mp3 and other sound files to be downloaded and played off-line for music listening. With a portable player, audio files can be listened to while you exercise, drive, or set working at your desk. Though do not be led to believe that you can only take advantage of podcasts if you have a portable media player. Players native to Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux are availble to allow you to listen directly from your workstation.
The term podcast originated in 2004, and is tied to the use of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to distribute files to subscribers. While most of these podcasts are simply audio, some are now available in video formats as well. By subscribing to a podcast RSS feed, the user can collect files of possible interest, then listen or view off-line, when it is convenient. This removes the restrictions of time and live internet connection associated with streaming files.
More information can be found at Wikipedia on podcasting.
The podcast developed when non-music audio files began to be produced and distributed. These begun primarily on technical topics, but have expanded into a wide range of subject matter. These are, for the most part, in a radio talk-show format, and several of these presentations may be of interest to the engineer in their effort to keep current. Some are professionally done, while others are pure amateur productions.
Podcasting initially was the domain of the "teckies" who wanted to produce and distribute their own "radio talk shows". Today, though, podcasts are produced for a number of purposes, including:
Those that I find most useful are This Week in Tech (TWiT), Security Now, Inside the Net, NPR's (National Public Radio) Science Friday, and our own IEEE Spectrum. But these are only a few of the thousands of podcasts that are available. NPR alone has over 250 podcast you can subscribe to!
There are several aggregators that are freely available. Two of the most common are Apple Computer's iTunes and ipodder. If you have an Apple iPod, or just want to listen to podcasts on your computer, then iTunes is likely the best choice for you.
You may subscribe to a podcast in two ways. First, on many podcast web sites there will be a button (like this one for iTunes 
) that will open the corresponding application and facilitate the subscription in the chosen aggregator. That is the easiest method of subscription. The other method with iTunes is click on Advanced --> Subscribe to podcast.... That will open up a dialog box where you can type, or paste, the URL for the RSS feed. Often web pages will have a button (like this 
) that provides the URL for the XML feed.
Podcasts can be found in many differnt locations. Many print, radio, and television productions have corresponding podcasts which can be found on their web sites. There are multiple directories available on the web to browse and search. Some of these are:
Many podcasts are also available directly from within iTunes. Click on Podcasts towards the top if the list on the left. Then click on Podcast directory link towards the bottom. This takes you to the section of the iTunes Music Store (note that podcasts are free) that specializes in podcasts. The entries can be browsed or searched, and those of interest easily subscribed to.| This Week in Tech http://thisweekintech.com/ | Consumer electronics, heavy on PCs |
| Security Now http://www.grc.com/SecurityNow.htm | Computer security |
| Inside the Net http://twit.tv | Web 2.0 topics |
| Manager Tools http://manager-tools.com | Management topics |
| NPR: 7AM News Summary npr podcast directory | Daily 5 minute news summary |
| IEEE Spectrum Radio http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/radio | Audio version of Spectrum articles |
| Quirks and Quarks http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/ | Weekly Science News by Canadian Broadcast Company |
Different software is available, most at little or no cost, to facilitate downloading these podcasts. The easiest to use, in my opinion, is iTunes. It is available for Windows and, of course, the Mac OS. There are hundreds of podcasts listed in the iTunes store for subscription. The application also allows URLs for other RSS feeds to be pased in and subscribed to.
Another, Open Source choice is ipodder which is available for Windows, the Mac OS, and linux. While it will not download directly to your portable audio file player, it is a very good aggregator with an extensive list of podcasts to choosed from. It is a good choice if your portable player is not an iPod. It, too, allows URLs to be pasted into the application.
Coming with the April Analog
This is a work in progress, or at least will be for the next few weeks. Please come back from time to time, or send me your comments/input on using podcasts.
Copyright(c) 2003-2006 IEEE Central Texas Section. All rights reserved.