Topic: Discuss the developments and trends in the area of RSS/podcasting

What is podcasting?

Podcasting only became popular when RSS version 0.92 came out. This is because it was only in this revision of RSS that audio data was allowed to be put into the web feeds. The word podcast comes from the combination of iPod and broadcast. Podcast is the action of putting audio files up onto the web and make it available of download, usually free of charge. However, there are some sites that charge the user for the act of downloading. These audio files are then either listened on the user’s personal computer or laptop or transferred into a portable media player such as the iPod. It is shown that most of the podcasts that are downloaded are never transferred onto a portable media player or are being deleted without being listened to. Podcasts, nowadays are being used to convey various types of news, such as technology, science, political views a whole hosts of other topics that are interesting and caters to many different people.
A brief description of Podcasting would be that it is online audio content that is delivered via an RSS feed. Compared to radio Podcasting gives more options in terms of content and programming than radio does. In addition, with Podcasting, listeners can determine the time and the place, meaning they decide what program they want to receive and when.

Detailed explainations about Podcasting can be viewed through the link.
http://www.podcasting-tools.com/

What are the developments?
Since the development of the portable media player led by the efforts of Apple with its iPod, more and more portable media players are popping up in the market and this has led to a direct increase of podcasting sites around the world. Software like iTunes from Apple (again) helps people keep track of the podcasts they subscribe to. Other software does the same function and they are called feed aggregators. These software are designed to read RSS feeds that belong to the sites that are podcasting and download new content from the feed once the new content is available. Furthermore, with RSS version 2.0, audio data is now allowed to be uploaded through the RSS feeds. This and the boom of portable media players have given the podcasting industry a boost. Even though with the constraints of the internet speeds, there are sites which encode their podcasts at lower bitrate, cutting down the size of the podcast file and this is to cater to those people that still uses dial-up connection for the internet.
Podcasts are free to share, and thus sharing of podcasts are technically not considered to be illegal, but using peer to peer software to share any kind of podcasts is illegal and can be prosecuted. Most of the podcasts are in a popular audio format called .mp3. This is the most widely supported format for portable music players, and is also very size efficient. The current rise of the media player is also attributed to the gaining popularity of the file format.
There are also new types of podcasting that are emerging in the world. There are types of podcasting known as Video Podcasting or vodcasts for that matter or Blogcasting. This two types of podcasting are new and are also gaining popularity. A Vodcast works like a podcast and can either be downloaded directly or streamed from the website it is hosted on. On the other hand, a blogcast is only applicable if the podcast of vodcast is hosted on a blog. Other than that fact, it is the same as either a podcast or vodcast. This has thus brought podcasting on its road to rise in fame.

Development of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feed

RSS was born when Dave Winer developed scripting News (one of the oldest Weblog in the year 1997. In the year 1999, Netscape developed a new version of RSS 0.90 which supported scripting News. This was simply XML (Extensible Markup Language) with an RDF Header. Dave Winer at UserLand developed scripting News 2.0b1. A new version of RSS 0.91 was developed by Netscape in the same year. In this version they removed the RDF header and added more features from scripting News 2.0b1. UserLand then got rid of scripting News and uses only RSS 0.91.
In the year 2000, UserLand officially releases RSS 0.91 specification. A new format of RSS 1.0 was then developed by a group lead by Rael Dornfest at O’Reilly. This format of RSS 1.0 uses RDF and namespaces, and is often confused as being the new version of RSS 0.91. In actual, RSS 1.0 is a completely new format with no ties to RSS 0.91. Dave Winer at UserLand developed the newer version of RSS 0.92

In the year 2002, Dave Winer left UserLand. After leaving the company he developed RSS 2.0 and the specifications for RSS 2.0 was officially released in the following year.

How is RSS used?
RSS is used by websites that usually have a large fan or visitor base and wants to keep its visitors updated on what are the new content that is available on the webpage. For sites that are hosting podcasts, its RSS feeds usually contains links to the few most recent podcasts and links to the summary page of the podcasts. This reduces the trouble for the user and speeds up the process of downloading of the podcasts. Furthermore, a person that has a RSS feed aggregator can also stream the podcasts from the aggregator, and not all websites that host podcasts allow streaming.
RSS is now quite popular among the internet generation. This tool is invaluable for people who wants to keep up with the current affairs in the world and would like an almost instantaneous update on the happenings on the internet is able to find out what is happening by using a feed aggregator or an internet browser that has that function built in.

References:

http://www.rss-specifications.com/history-rss.htm.
http://www.w3schools.com/rss/rss_intro.asp


What is RSS
RSS, now being called Really Simple Syndication, has brought web browsing to a higher level. In the past, we used to have to bookmark a page or to go through our history and to manually click and check if there were any updates on a blog, news, or even podcasts. Now, with a simple subscription to the blog of web that has RSS enabled, whenever there is an update, a feed will be sent to the user thru a RSS document. It will contain either a summary or the full content of what’s updated. It allows users to keep track and up-to-date of their favourite sites automatically and save the hassle of having to check back daily.

The benefits of RSS
The benefit of a RSS subscription is that users does not disclose their emails and thus are better protected again threats associated with emails such as spam, virus, phishing, and identity theft. Also, to stop receiving the feed, users only need to remove the feed from the aggregator, a feed reader. The feeds received are sorted according to the entries. One such usage of the RSS feed will be to receive daily horoscope or weather reports.

Common misconception of RSS
Many assume that RSS is only for syndicating the contents of blogs; nothing could be further from the truth. Blogs and online journals have rocketed to popularity in the last few years, and many bloggers use RSS as a means to distribute and syndicate their blog posts. Subscribers receive information each time the blog is updated. However this is NOT the only use for RSS. RSS can deliver any kind of content, including forum posts, discount coupons, newsletters or press releases. Blogs are just one type of information syndicated by RSS feeds. Blogs may be syndicated using RSS, but do not assume that content found in an RSS feed is from a blog.

How is Podcasting Related to RSS?
Well, podcasts are simply RSS feeds that contain audio content in the enclosure field. Over the last year the term podcast has expanded to include RSS feeds that contain videos as well as audio files. Podcasts use the RSS specification to deliver the rich media. In the short time RSS has been around, many misconceptions have been formed for a surprisingly simple concept. RSS is simply a standard for syndicating information (any type of information) on the web. Users opt to subscribe the information in an RSS feed.

The links below are the two websites which I used for my research.

1. http://www.rssgov.com/
2. http://www.webreference.com/authoring/languages/xml/rss/intro/