Friday, June 15, 2007

Week Nine, Thing 21

When I first heard about podcasting, I said to myself, "Why would anyone want to download a podcast to their iPod? It's like listening to talk radio or something. People pay for brief audio clips and listen to them like a track?" Then I found out that podcasts were named after the iPod, but they're really just another audio file. So then it made more sense to think that people would want to be able to add audio clips to web pages and stuff. It wasn't until I had heard about travelcasts that I saw some really cool potential in podcasting. In fact, I only recently heard about this. My husband and I took a few days to check out Philadelphia. While searching for travel info, I ran across some podcasts that you could download to your portable media player. You could listen to a personal guided tour of the historic district. Cool, huh? So, I looked around Podcast Alley to find a podcast of interest. Since I think this travel idea is so cool, I went in that direction. First, I tried to subscribe to a collection of podcasts of Cape Town audio tours. It totally didn't work, but I can download them. So then I checked out the The ZA Show podcast, which is a radio show about things going on in South Africa and Cape Town. It's pronounced "zed-ay" show, BTW. It's a regular podcast from a South African couple. They do news, music, interviews, etc.

What potential do I see for this? I could see some Ghost Walk possibilities! We could do podcasts for do-it-yourself walking tours and for the driving tour of the county. That might be fun!

For this discovery exercise, I didn't do the optional part about making my own podcast. I just didn't have anything to say. If I did, I would. :)

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