Podcasts and Wikis

Podcasts - are they free or what?

Well the podcast is something I stumbled across quite a while back now. I knew they were audio recordings that could be downloaded but there were only a couple I had listened to.

The first was a podcast from a radio program called The Ricky Gervais Show. Having watched The Office (written by Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant)
I was keen to experience what happens when Ricky Gervais, Steven Merchant and (friend) Karl Pilkington trap themselves in a studio together to do a weekly radio show. I had heard that the podcasts of the show were for sale from ABC stores and from iTunes etc. but there was also another option. I found that YouTube had many of the podcasts, all of which can be listened to for free. What I discovered by listening to the show is that the content of podcasts can range from formal radio programs, to others bordering on complete and utter chaos such as this one - I guess that is part of its appeal.

On looking into podcasts further, I realised how easy it is to subscribe to free podcasts via your iTunes software. Within minutes iTunes had downloaded and stored the latest podcast of The Book Show (broadcast on Radio National). The next time there is a new podcast available it will be automatically downloaded and appear in the 'podcasts' section of iTunes. Couldn't be easier really

World of Wikis

Well I had used Wikipedia quite a bit, so I'm guessing a look of confusion appeared on my face when people started talking about setting up their own 'Wikis'. Thankfully the short video sums it up nicely, it all makes perfect sense now.

I can see how usefull it must be for a group of people to all have a single webpage to log onto and communicate through. It's like having an online whiteboard that everyone can contribute to and edit at any time. No more lost emails, everyone can go to the one location to see what the latest is.

Here is a really interesting presentation by Brion Vibber who has seen the growth of MediaWiki and Wikipedia over the last four years. He describes some of the challenges he faces through his work for MediaWiki.

RSS Feeds ... Feeding Us What Exactly??

It's interesting to see how quickly things develop in the realm of the web. I have known about an enigmatic thing called the RSS for a while now. I knew that it basically brings you information somehow, however through researching it further I can now see the huge potential it has for gathering useful information.

RSS feeds are much like having your newspaper delivered to your door, except in an electronic sense. You don't have to continually look for news on websites in the hope that there will be something that interests you. Instead you can reverse the flow of the traffic by requesting that the information that matches your interests arrives instantly at your digital doorstep. When you log onto your RSS reader it is all there waiting for you!

In the video posted below there is a great demonstration on how this tool can be used to gain information of all sorts. From tracking ebay for that particular item you are looking to buy, to getting updates about who is subscribing to you blogs. The video even shows us how to subscribe to torrents of media that have been uploaded to the web.

So in a nutshell, RSS feeds can get us with pretty much any type of information that we require, and hopefully it can help us avoid consuming the mindless information we don't need.