Podcasting for Dummies (even lawyers) : Wall Street Journal

Podcasting is heading mainstream. Apple Computer yesterday introduced its latest version of iTunes music software, this one including a feature making it easier to find, download and listen to podcasts.

This morning’s Wall Street Journal calls Apple’s offering the TV Guide for Internet audio programs. As Tim Stanley over at Justia posted, you can list your lawyer podcasts in iTunes so others can find them.

Here’s the Journal’s take.

Apple’s embrace of podcasts represents the biggest endorsement yet of the relatively new but fast-growing phenomenon. The premise behind podcasts is that they let consumers listen to audio programs when they want to, rather than when broadcasters schedule them. Major media companies, including such broadcasters as NBC and ABC, are doing podcasts of their news programming. Radio personalities such as Rush Limbaugh, too, are doing podcasts. In addition, there are thousands of amateur podcasters who are part of a grassroots movement, showcasing everything from politics, to their favorite music, to a discussion of what they had for breakfast that morning.

Apple is not the only one coming out big for podcasts. The Journal reports “Microsoft Corp. plans to offer podcasting-related technologies in the future” and “today San Francisco start-up company Blinkx plans to introduce a tool for searching the text of 20,000 podcasts…”

The appeal for lawyers is the ability to do a highly specialized podcasts for their targeted audience. There’s no costly Federal Communications Commission radio license because podcast are transmitted over the Internet as opposed to the airwaves.

The cost to produce podcasts is low. C.C. Chapman, mentioned by the Journal, bought more expensive than most podcasters and has only $200 in the audio equipment.

Best of all for folks like me, Apple has a deal with various music companies where I can use 30 second sound bites in my podcasts – something in the works for those folks who have not had their fill of me already.