I will just say, I’m in awe as to how many information outlets, be it sports, news, politics or other things have taken advantage of what the podcasting services on iTunes have to offer. So many outlets, National Public Radio, MSNBC, ESPN, and others have put full episode downloads of some of their favorite shows on the podcast pages of iTunes. Shows like ‘Pardon the Interruption’, ‘Countdown’, ‘Around the Horn’ and other shows are up for free downloads in their entirety, now while most of them are insanely popular, it kind of makes you wander how in the heck can they put them up for free. The answer is simple, advertisements. Dick’s Sporting Goods store has advertisements at the beginning and the end of each podcast of Pardon the Interruption, but it is so worth it to hear some of my favorite shows, especially when I cannot get to them at all times live.

Oh, hold on a sec, I have yet to cover podcasts at all in this blog, well why don’t I talk about them now? PC Magazine, has a great definition on podcasts, “An audio broadcast that has been converted to an MP3 file or other audio file format for playback in a digital music player.” More or less it’s basically downloadable internet radio for an audio player. And because of the increase in sales of MP3 players like iPods among others, podcasting has become a staple of the new media, and I think it would be a good idea to give a few of my personal favorites out.

Monday’s

Monday’s is a humor podcast that combines discoveries on the internet along with personal experiences of the cast. The show itself used to be weekly, but it has really become a random schedule, with the last episode having been published in May. Two segments of the show ‘People Dumber than Me’ and ‘Girl’ are a pair of staples of the show. The first is humorous telling of stories of dumb criminals, much like you would find in the odd things page of a news site. The other is sort of a weekly rant by the lone female member of the group covering whatever she has found to be sort of head scratching to her. Another segment ‘Richard the Toy Boy’ takes a look at interesting objects, that may be for sale or may not be, that have made appearances on certain sites on the internet. The show itself has a tech theme as three members are computer programmers, and two of them host another podcast called ‘Dotnet Rocks’ which is actually a serious programming show.

‘Daily Source Code’

Adam Curry, who was at one time an MTV v-jay, hosts this show, updated 3 days a week, where he profiles other podcasts that are out there. He also uses this podcast as sort of a springboard for his own opinions taking on kind of a news feel. But his focus is really on the ever growing world of podcasting, as well as profiling independent, pod safe music. What is pod safe music you might ask? This type of music is actually on a site where the artists have already given those who produce podcasts, permission to use their songs in their shows, rather than with using mainstream music, having to jump through so many hoops. Curry has been referred to as the godfather of podcasting, and he is definitely at the forefront of much of the fraternity that podcasting is.

‘OtakuGeneration’

Okay, indulging my geeky side for a moment, this is a weekly anime podcast that has been going strong since June 2005. While the show has gone through sort of a revolving door of cast members, the show is still very well put together and actually a very good discussion show of various Anime series. In addition, tech news and news from what’s going on in the land of the rising sun are regular segments of the show.

In all podcasting is a new generation of on the go radio. Because the shows themselves are not bound by any overreaching oversite organizations a la the FCC, anything, and I do mean anything can be done with this particular medium. iTunes has been a huge reason podcasts have been so successful, even though many of the top podcasts on their podcast page are mainly shows from the major media providers as I said in the beginning.