I podcasted the last paragraph of the “Podcasting For The School Bus” story in case some readers who are not already into it may want to get a taste of what podcasts are like. I think of poadcasts as mini radio programs — they are actually syndicated radio programs being “broadcast” from blogs instead of radio stations. A podcast can be any kind of audio — music, an interview, a phone conversation — and there is no need to have an iPod to participate. The podcaster puts a link to the audio content into their blog posting. The listener subscribes to podcasts using “podcatching” software — often called “aggregators” which periodically check for new content and automatically download it. The listener can listen to the content with iTunes on their PC or Mac or, if they choose, can also sync it to their iPod and listen to it on the train. There are many ways to do create a podcast, and many more are sure to arise soon.
For this story, I dictated the last paragraph of the “Podcasting For The School Bus” story using Copytalk, a tool I use for dictating short emails and story ideas. I normally call Copytalk with the Sony Ericsson P910a and then dictate. The dictation is transcribed by a real live person at a transcription center with near perfect accuracy. I then receive the dictation as an email. The copytalk dictation was converted to mp3 and placed in iTunes. If you want to listen, you can listen below.