What is Podcasting?
A brief introduction to the technology

Podcasts at the most basic level are nothing more than a multimedia file that contains audio and/or video. It's the same kind of files that have been around on the web for years. What make them "podcasts" is the way that users access them.

The Podcast Difference

Unlike streaming media on the internet that isn't downloadable, podcasts were intended from the start to be downloaded to a computer. Podcasters would create "channels" (think radio station) on their website where they would regularly add new episodes of their podcasts. They would update an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) file to "broadcast" their content to the world. Users would then subscribe to the channel using podcast aggregators which would at regular intervals check this RSS file to see if there were new episodes to download. If so, it would automatically download the new episode. Users would then be able to listen to the episode whenever they wanted.

Why It's Called "Podcasting"

At around the same time that all of this is taking place, the MP3 player market is taking off. Users are able to take their downloaded content and put them on their players so that they could now listen whenever and wherever they wanted. Due to the overwhelming popularity of the iPod, a new term was coined: iPod + Broadcasting = Podcasting.

So as you can see, the term podcasting really doesn't have anything to do with the iPod in terms of how the technology works. iPods aren't involved with the creation of the content, which can be done with standard audio-recording software. iPods aren't necessary for the viewing of the content, which can be accomplished by sitting in front of the computer or by moving audio podcasts to any MP3 player*. iPods are just associated because they happened to be the popular player of the time and it made the technology sound trendy to potential users.

(*Note: at the current time, the video iPod is one of the only portable players that can handle video podcasts.)