Feature: How to create your own podcast

From podcast to pod-cash
There is no doubt that far more people are now listening to podcasts than before. Even more are likely to be doing so in the future. One prediction, from Forrester Research, predicts that, by 2010, more than 12.3 million households worldwide will be subscribing to podcasts.

Another forecast is even more sanguine: Bridge Ratings confidently expects between 45 and 75 million individual podcast listeners by 2010. Compare this with the radio ratings company's estimate of the number of listeners in 2004 and 2005: 820,000 and 4.8 million respectively.

Another relevant statistic estimates that some 20 per cent of people who have downloaded a podcast do so on a weekly basis. Elsewhere, Bridge Ratings also predicts a total US podcasting audience of 10 million by the end of 2006.

Additionally, researcher Emarketer foresees that US advertising spending on podcasts will rise from $80m in 2006 to $300m by 2010. The growing appetite of consumers for 'instant' technologies (on-demand films, news and sport on TV) makes these predictions entirely probable.

So podcasting is booming, but what exactly is it? Definitions (such as those on Webopedia) sometimes stress its similarity to RSS ('Rich Site Summary') but are vague when it comes to the nuts and bolts of exactly how it works.

There are several stages to successful podcasting. At its simplest, users create a standard blog and then add audio and graphics elements.

Now, though, many podcasters will be using their PC or other digital recorder to create a 'program' of some kind. This could be just about anything, from a discussion with friends, a personal compilation of music tracks, a radio show or even a recording of a public event.

PCW, for example, provides a Product of the Week podcast which is an audio review of a selected product, and several of our sister magazines produce news and discussion-based podcasts - Computeractive looks at the week's consumer news in its Active News podcast for instance.