Remember AM radio?  Yeah, me neither!  But I’ve read that they used to have things called “talk shows” on it… for FREE even!

Actually, I truly am a big fan of talk radio and have, ever since I can remember, put up with large doses of static to hear my favorite hosts take calls or opine about nearly any subject.  What better way is there to pass time on a long car ride?

Well, as with many things, modern technology has improved this ancient form of communication with the advent of podcasting.

What is podcasting?

Audio programs of all sorts have been presented on the Internet since its inception.  I remember, back in the early 90s, downloading and listening to quite a few clips of my favorite radio programs and even a few TV shows over a 9600 bits per second modem.  Yes, it was painfully slow, but it was fantastic to be able to listen to a program without having to record it in the first place.  If you missed something, you could just download a clip and listen to it at your convenience.

The evolution of those audio clips available for download has lead us to podcasting.  Simply put, a podcast is an audio or video file automatically transferred to your computer (or to some cell phones).  Instead of visiting a web site and downloading the clip, you “subscribe” to a program and it’s automatically downloaded to your machine.

The podcast itself can contain nearly any type of audio or video program.  Many popular radio shows put out podcasts of their broadcasts or provide a few interesting clips, for example.  Sports recaps, ringtones, comedy programs, original music, independent movie projects, educational shows, tips and tricks, audiobooks, and news programs are all available, too.  And almost all podcasts are completely free to the listener or viewer.

Say you’re interested in scuba diving.  There are dozens of podcasts available that talk about a variety of scuba aspects:  great places to go, new equipment, even some basics for beginners.  Nearly every aspect is covered in some way or another via a podcast.

Getting podcasts

Getting started is pretty simple.  You can listen to or view your podcast on a portable media player, such as an iPod, or directly on your computer.

Either way, the best place to start is by downloading a podcast aggregator, or “podcatcher”, of some sort.  This piece of software makes it easy to find podcasts using a search tool, enables management of your subscriptions, and allows you to play or to transfer the files to your favorite music player easily.  There are many podcatchers available, but by far the most popular is Apple’s iTunes, a free application available for both Windows and Mac OS.

After you’ve installed iTunes, you can click on Podcasts in the list on the left, and then Podcast Directory at the bottom of the screen.  Those familiar with the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) will recognize the interface.  Once in the directory, you can use the search box to find a particular show, topic, or podcaster.

You have several choices when you find a show that looks interesting.  To preview an episode, double click on its title. You can click on Get Episode next to any individual show listing to download only that track or click on subscribe to get the latest episode immediately and any future episodes automatically.  All of the podcasts in the iTMS are completely free, even the subscriptions.

Despite the confusing name, you don’t need an iPod to consume podcasts.  In fact, some people choose to call them netcasts to help alleviate this confusion.  iTunes itself acts as a player for both video and audio podcasts (and other media on your computer, for that matter).  So, you can either watch or listen to the show on your computer or transfer them to an iPod or other media player.

Creating a podcast

Publishing your own podcast — to promote your business, to use as an audio or video blog, or to discuss a particular subject — is a lot easier than it may sound at first.  Most of the software you’re going to need is free, along with several services to help with the process.  We’ll discuss an overview of producing audio-only podcasts for sake of simplicity.

First off, a little planning goes a long way.  Figure out what you want the show to sound like and make some notes so that you don’t forget anything.  To minimize editing, you may wish to practice what you’re going to say before recording.

A great audio tool for both Windows and Mac is Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net).  This free software will give you a lot of control over your audio recordings while remaining simple to use for newbies.  Use Audacity to record as many segments as you’d like.  Then edit, each track, stitch them together, and add some music, loops, or effects — again, found free with a Google search or two.  Once your podcast sounds awesome, export it as an MP3.

You’ll need some online space to which you’ll upload your file.  Services like PodBean.com offer free hosting for your podcast, and many even have a few useful tools to create and promote your show.  Or, if you already have a website, you can upload the file you created to a “podcast” folder on FTP server.  If you do this, you’ll need to create a “control file”, too.  Check out Poderator.com, a free podcast publishing service, for help with this.

The last step is to let the world know about your new show.  You can submit it to podcast directories like iTunes and Zune.net directly, but I would also recommend using a service like FeedBurner.com.  FeedBurner, now owned by Google, has numerous tools to help track the number of people that listen to your podcast, as well as services to promote your show and submit it automatically to a ton of directories.  And, of course, it’s free.  Yes, I like free.

Getting help

If you want to learn more, drop me an email at kevin@backslashtech.com.  I produce a few podcasts and would love to help a newbie get started.  Podcasting can be a lot of fun, but you can also develop it into a money maker by selling advertising, promoting a product or service, or a number of other ways.

You can even subscribe to a podcast of this very column right here on this site!  Just go to the Tech Today logo at the top of the sidebar to the left (under the Twitter logo).  It’s free, of course.

Not just another “normal” beta release, this version should be relatively feature-complete and stable (although the Win7 beta previously released was pretty darn solid).  But the even more interesting item of note is the fact that this version will be good until June 2010.

The beta that Microsoft released just a few short months ago was usable until this coming August.  This led to many rumors of a fall release date for the shippable product; a rumor that was denied repeatedly by Microsoft.

Does a move to next summer mean that we won’t see the operating system until my 36th birthday?  I doubt it.  In the past, release candidates were usually designed to overlap a bit so that users could get comfortable with the OS, becoming obligated to purchase the final version in order to keep the features upon which they had become accustomed.

I believe that Microsoft will release Windows 7 sometime in early 2010, although I hope that I’m wrong.  I would much rather, as a computer retailer, see a undeniably compelling reason for people to buy computers this coming holiday season!

The service took the better part of a day to get setup correctly.  After getting my contacts perfect on my iPhone, I synced them to Address Book on the Mac only to find out that the format was slightly different on the two devices.  I spent a fair amount of time editing contants for companies, for example, to “file” correctly.

Then, thinking that everything was going to align perfectly again, I synced with MobileMe…only to find that the format was just a bit different again.  Arrggg!  My APPLE Mac, my APPLE iPhone, and my APPLE MobileMe service all have different formats for contact information?!?  Come on, now!  Seriously.

The fun didn’t stop there.  I got all of the APPLE products looking nice and then (bravely) decided to bring Microsoft’s tools into the mix.  You guessed it!

This is why it took so long to get my contacts groomed.  All 504 of them (down from 628 after removing duplicates, etc.).  I played that game a few times until everything was perfect.  I won’t even tell you how much of a hassle syncing the calendars was!

But, for all of that pain in the butt configuration, MobileMe has turned out to be exactly what I was looking for.  My email, contacts, and calendars (all four of them) are all perfectly synced and available where ever I’m at – on my Windows Vista laptop, my Mac Mini, my iPhone, and even on the web.  Nirvana does exist!

Don’t get me wrong, I still have some problems, but I’ve learned to live with them.  For example, if I read several messages on my iPhone and delete them, they may pop back up a minute or two later.  A simple tap of the Refresh button trashes them again – and for good this time.  I shouldn’t have to do that, but it seems a small price to pay to be able to use all of the great Mac apps like Mail.app and iCal and still have the ability to use my laptop to read filed emails.

Let’s hope Apple continues to work on MobileMe to make it more consistent and reliable.  Otherwise, “Exchange for the rest of us” is going to look more like Microsoft Bob….

But it definitely is cool.  I have been looking for a seemless way to sync my calendar and contacts between my iPhone, Mac, and multiple Windows PCs.  The best way I’ve found so far is through a clunky mess of services such as Calgoo or, most recently, Google Calendar (with their new Outlook syncing tool).

The MobileMe service solves these issues and allows for email and photo syncing as well.  Oh, and don’t forget about the 20GB worth of online space that can be used to share and sync files and folders.  Cool stuff indeed!

When you update your calendar, for example, on your iPhone, the information is pushed immediately over the cell network to any other devices you have sharing the service.  Immediately.  So I can have ALL of my contacts, calendar and email shared on my Mac, my laptop, my iPhone, and my home computer.

This is way handy as I now have to manually update this devices – plug my iPhone in the dock, sync my Mac with the Google Calendar, etc. – or just do without.  Normally, I keep all of my info current on the laptop as I take it home most nights and generally sync my phone with it.  That’s a pain for those short days at the office that I just want to hop on the Mac to handle email or whatever without plugging in the laptop and waiting for Vista to load (which can be a painfully slow process).

Instead, I’ll be able to just wake up the Mac, use Mail.app (which is INFINITELY quicker than Outlook) to deal with my email, update iCal, and everything will be synced automagically with Outlook on the home computer, my iPhone and my laptop when I turn it on next.

To top all of this awesomeness off is the fact that all of this information is also available through a slick “ajaxy” Web 2.0 interface.  I can hop on a friend’s PC (or Mac, or iPhone, or Linux machine, or Wii, or PS3, or…) and pull up my personal calendar in old-fashioned Google Calendar style.

I can’t wait to spend my hard-earned money on this worthwhile service.  Now I just need to figure out a great new email address.  It’s going to be ________@me.com.  Suggestions?  Leave a comment!