[VAL] theVAP: podcasts explained

[safari_tim@xxxxxxxxxxx (Tim S)]

It has come to my attention that many people are not familiar with 
what a podcast is. I hope this explaination will help.

Our podcast is a talk show about airstreams. You can download the 
file as an mp3, and play it back at your convience. You can play it 
on your computer, or if you have a portable player you can listen 
to it that way. The files are usually large because they are not 
streamed. They are downloaded complete so that you can put them on 
a portable player. The amount of time they take to download depends 
on your internet connection. If you have a high-speed connection 
such as cable or dsl, it should be downloaded in a minute or so. It 
will take much longer over dial-up.

What makes the show a podcast is the ability to (s)ubscribe to it. 
Much like a newspaper, it will be delivered to you each time a new 
episode is released. Subscription is free. You (s)ubscribe to podcasts 
using software. The most popular software for subscribing and playing 
podcasts is Apple's iTunes program, which is also free. See apple.com. 
Each time you run the software, for example iTunes, the program will 
check for new episodes in the background and get them for you. 

If you don't wish to use subscription software, you can go to 
http://www.podnova.com and put in theVAP in the search box. Their site 
will let you play each episode from their webpage. Again, all free.

One final way to get it is to go to www.theVAP.com and use the direct 
download link. This will download the show directly to your hard drive 
to play back at your convience.

In short, a podcast is a mp3 that you *can* (s)ubscribe to. You can 
listen on your PC, MAC, iPod, or any other MP3 player you have.

--
-Tim 
theVAP.com