Big IDEA

Linking to mp3’s ain’t podcasting

25 January 2007

This is one of my pet peeves, when people use the term “podcast” to mean “audio.” For example, somebody might throw up an audio file on their server and call it a podcast, when all it is is a poor, lonely audio file, just floating around out there in the ether, waiting–hoping–for someone to come along and add it to an RSS feed so it can grow up and become a real podcast. Now it might be a great audio file, perfectly encoded with the greatest of skill that gives the greatest quality-size ratio, but until somebody puts it in a feed as an enclosure, it ain’t a podcast.

Some of these folks have even been known to work for the government. I already mailed them and pointed them to the wikipedia entry for podcasting.

Now let me confess, I despise podcasts because a) if I don’t want to read your drivel, what makes you think I want to listen to it and all your techno-samples and b) I’m too lazy to listen to podcasts to find the good ones. So I’m not some podcast geek, I’m just a geek that doesn’t like muddying up the water.