What is Podcasting?

Podcasting is the next big thing among the techie community. But what exactly is podcasting? The word itself was derived from a combination of Apple’s “i-Pod” and broadcasting, and it’s a way of publishing files, mostly audio, to the internet that can be then downloaded by anyone around the world.

You can easily think of a podcast as a radio show on demand. As it consists of a series of individual episodes that you can listen to when ever you want either on your computer, MP3 player, or just directly from your web browser.

However, podcasting is more than a radio show. Podcasts can be easily downloaded automatically, usually for free, using software capable of reading feed formats such as the RSS feeds. In simple words, when you subscribe to a podcast, you actually subscribe to a reader’s feed which supplies the podcaster, author of a podcast, a link to that feed. As a result the reader can then check the user's subscribed feeds to see if any of those feeds have new content since the last time it checked and if so, retrieve that content and present it to the user. The only difference between podcasting and a typical RSS feed is that the former contains an audio file in it.

Therefore, listeners can benefit from podcasting as it allows them to be always up to date since the RSS feeds makes the process of monitoring audio updates much more efficient.

But what’s even more interesting about podcasting is that anyone with a microphone, a computer and an internet connection can publish audio shows that can be listened to by people anywhere in the world. And although it was established in 2004, it is rapidly becoming a popular way for people to share audio shows primarily because of its very low barriers to entry.

Podcasting offers to both its listeners and users a great range of categories that can be used for. Podcasting examples include the creation of personal audio blogs, interviews for enhancing news coverage, music shows, audio tour guides, educational content that depends on audio, or even in-house news updates of a company. Therefore, whether you are an individual or a company it makes no difference, as if you have a brilliant idea about a podcast, you might as well do it!


Check out:http://podcastalley.com/what_is_a_podcast.php

Concerns of a PR postgraduate student

Ancient Greeks used to say that the fortunate in life are those who are intellectually ignorant; that is, life is sometimes easier when you know less.

But nowadays, in a world that has become more and more complicated and demanding, this adage sounds a bit trivial, at least to me.

In fact, when it comes to technology and its ongoing advances it seems that exactly the opposite exists: the less you know the less ready and 'armed' you are to deal with the challenging and highly competitive field of business communications.

As a public relations postgraduate student, and nearly in my 30’s, I would never have realized before how far I have been left behind in terms of ICT’s knowledge. And if it wasn’t for my first PR &Technology course at the University of Stirling, I would still be in the dark.

Maybe, it’s the Generation Y syndrome, I don’t know. What matters is that this course is an excellent starting point to ‘meet and greet’ with ICT concepts and actually learn something useful and up-to-date that books alone can’t teach.

My journey to technology and public relations is still at its start but at least now I know for sure that the terms blog, podcasting, social media press releases, RSS etc are no longer part of an unknown realm to me.

However, moving a step forward to being less ‘intellectually ignorant’, at least in terms of ICT, I must also admit that now I am more concerned than ever about the development of Public Relation practices for the years to come.

In a world that constantly changes and where news is disseminated throughout within seconds, via the World Wide Web, can Public Relations practices remain as they are? Or should it be altered, reinvented even, to fit ‘new’ circumstances?

How can we still discuss corporate image and branding, crisis communications practices, organizational culture or employees motivations without considering, for instance, the massive expansion of blogs, forums or podcasting? Moreover, should we keep on implementing public relations strategies and campaigns to reach target audiences through the use of traditional communication vehicles when the structure of the communication itself, has changed throughout the years because of the internet?

These questions are not at all new to several practitioners and academics, especially in the UK and the US. And definitely there are no straightforward answers to these questions.

Whilst there is still much room for progress, in terms of both practice and education, the significant impact of information communication technologies to Public Relations cannot be underestimated.

Yet, it would be more comforting and promising for the future of public relations to see more universities adding to their curriculum courses that address these issues so as future pr practitioners can benefit in the years to come. And that comes from the mouth of a postgraduate student…