These reactions have compelled me to spread the news about this incredible technology and the amazing sea of solid content that friends, family, colleagues, and cohorts could be enjoying, both to educate and entertain. Even though “podcasts” have been around for nearly six years and have been steadily building popularity, podcasts are still more than a bit under the radar.

Now, if you want to be cool before this technological zeitgeist goes mainstream, here’s a crash course in podcasts to teach you most everything you need to know to…

1. Be hip to a cool “new” tech
2. Explore a sea of incredibly informative, entertaining, and educational content

It’s 2010, we have two computers per household, ubiquitous wireless broadband in every coffee shop across the nation, 1,000 songs in our pockets* and now we give you the podcast!

Some prefer to use the term netcast as “podcast” is a little misleading. Podcast was borne of the popularity of Apple’s portal media player, the iPod. Also, with Apple’s inclusion of a Podcast Directory in their iTunes software, podcast is by far and away the term you’ll most frequently hear. There’s nothing wrong referring to a podcast as a netcast or vice versa, just know they are the same thing and you can access them on any computer or portal media player, not just Apple’s iPod. I’m in the habit of calling them podcasts and will refer to them that way henceforth.

What is a podcast?

Wikipedia has a great explanation: “A podcast is a series of digital media files (either audio or video) that are released episodically and downloaded through web syndication.” It’s like television or radio shows produced for distribution on the web via a subscription.

The audio and video quality will vary, depending on the equipment the podcast producer uses, but one thing is true of all my favorite shows: The content is top notch and delivered with pure passion. 95% of all podcasters produce their shows as a labor of love and from a desire to deliver a solid show that entertains, informs, and educates. Don’t take this the wrong way; it’s not as if every other podcast is a high school kid with a web camera playing Mister Wizard in the basement. Many podcasts are produced by people (or a team of people) with talent and production quality rivaling mainstream media. Some content is even in high definition and starring talent that gives professional broadcast journalists and television anchors a run for their money. Mainstream talent often guest stars on podcasts and some even produce podcasts themselves! You will be amazed at the content and production quality of podcasts available. Moreover, many of the major networks and mainstream broadcast providers such as NPR, PRI, ESPN, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, Discovery, G4, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times are available.

Whatever you’re into, whatever you want to be more clued-up about or entertained by, it’s out there; hobbies, health, fitness, video games, business, sports, news, cooking, movies, automobiles, comedy, writing, television, acting, film making, science, technology, politics and the list goes on. As with the internet, there’s no end to what’s available.

Where to find podcasts

iTunes software is available free for download for both Mac and PC and has a beautifully organized directory of 100+ thousand free audio and video podcasts available for download inside their Podcast Directory in the iTunes store.

The iTunes Podcast Directory

Download iTunes here: http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

Another excellent, free open-source, podcast client is miro: http://www.getmiro.com/

The Miro Player

Once you have one of these “podcatchers,” software built to find and subscribe to podcasts, you can browse genres or search for topics in their podcast directories, read descriptions, reviews, and sample episodes. When you find one that interests you, subscribe to it, and when a new episode is released iTunes will automatically download it for you!

New podcasts in my iTunes library

How to watch/listen to Podcasts

Options abound for watching and listening to podcasts, but here are the main three:

1. Podcatcher software like iTunes, Miro, or others
2. Portable media devices like an iPod, Zune, or others
3. Web browser on a computer to play episodes right from the web page

If you want to take the podcasts with you wherever you go, you’ll need an iPod or other portable media player such as a Zune (Microsoft only). This is one of my favorite ways to consume podcasts. I grab my iPod packed full of new shows and hit the treadmill or road, learning about all the lastest tech news and video games, movies, and book reviews. I watch most of my subscription video podcasts on my laptop, since it’s hard to run and watch a video podcast. For some podcasts to which I don’t subscribe but on which I occasionally find content of interest, I’ll just watch or listen to a few episodes right from the podcasts’ website, picking and choosing what I want to catch up on.

No matter how you listen to your favorite podcasts, I urge you to explore the podcast directories and find some favorites. Begin enjoying the content podcasters pour into each and every episode they produce.

Here are few staff recommendations worth checking out:

1. This Week in Tech (TWiT)  - weekly audio podcast on all things tech
2. MacBreak Weekly – audio podcast about all things Apple Computer (iphone, iPods, OS X…)
3. GeekBrief.TV - quick video podcast geared towards gadgets, tech news and other geekery
4. Grammer Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing – excellent audio show on grammar if you want to know the difference between “affect” and “effect”, “loan” verses “lend”, “shall” verse “will” or when to use “which” instead of “that” or what the difference between “biweekly” and “semiweekly”
5. Inside Home Recording – all about home studio recording
6. Podcast Academy – a podcast about how to podcast, great podcast education
7. Net@Night – covers what’s happening on the Net right now like cool sites, web services and viral videos
8. Notes in Spanish Inspired Beginners – an awesome free way to learn Spanish

SSD is a rapidly developing technology and as with all things tech, performance continues to increase and prices continue to drop. Already drive sizes matching traditional laptop drive size offerings from 160GB to 256GB are available; my MacBook Pro only has a 200GB traditional hard drive and had I an extra $700 burning a hole in my pocket, I would LOVE to get my hands on an Intel X25, an OCZ or any of the many other SSDs available on the market today as several users hungry to experience the increased system performance already have, albeit at a price premium.

So what’s so great about SSD technology that some people are actually compelled to pay the extra cash?!? SSDs offer several significant benefits that many users feel is well worth the price such as:

• Major system performance increases
• Significantly faster start up, standby/hibernate, resume/wake-up, reboot and shutdown times
• Ultra quick application launching (literally 2 seconds, even for monster applications such as MS Office apps)
• Increased battery life due to reduced power consumption (additionally, longer battery life means less recharging and fewer recharge cycles on the batteries means you don’t need to replace your laptop battery as often (every time I replace my laptop battery it costs me $150), and for those of us that never bother replacing our batteries, it means your battery will yield higher performance longer. Woot!)
• Lower weight (after lugging my laptop to the corner coffee shop, I needed an adjustment)
• Silent operation (no moving parts)
• High mechanical reliability (again, no moving parts nearly eliminates the risk of “mechanical” failures. Additionally, failures occur less frequently whilst writing/erasing data, which means a lower chance of irrecoverable data)
• No file fragmentation (the end of the hated defrag?! did you ever think you’d see the day!?)
• Faster installation of operating systems and applications, and faster end user data restoration (IT folks love this)

As prices fall and capacities rise, SSDs will only continue gaining popularity, inching toward mainstream adoption with end users and IT departments alike and hopefully sooner than later. Meanwhile, the next time I have a chance to opt for an SSD over a traditional hard drive, count me in.

Consider the cellular phone. Before Apple introduced the iPhone®, Internet enabled cell phones were limited to something called wireless application protocol (WAP). This was a very specific and minimalistic way of delivering web content to a telephone. The iPhone introduced to the realm of mobile devices the full-featured web browsing experience formerly reserved for conventional computers. Today, the Blackberry Storm and other similar devices offer full html browsers with Flash and allow us to seamlessly connect to virtual desktops.

With this technological progress, no longer are we limited to the boundaries of WAP, the limited number of websites that accommodated it, and the devices designed around it. Cell phones have now developed into full-featured mobile devices called “smart phones”, consolidating several separate technologies into one tool. We can check email, browse the web, access business applications, watch streaming video or television, dictate correspondence, download and store music, use moving-map GPS, and make phone calls, too. Almost every technological whim is now being bundled into a small phone. Widely and wildly popular with individual users, smart phones have gained recognition as effective business tools.

Migrating away from the desktop to two-pound laptops to ultra-light notebooks to the latest smart phones while leveraging virtualization and cloud computing technology, businesses now realize in one portable package performance and functionality that equals or exceeds that which was realized from desktop workstations. Untethered from computers the size necessary to carry bulk processing power, sales people, service engineers, and other remote users can access databases, business applications, and perform essential tasks on the fly, on a small phone, with the required processing power being handled elsewhere and delivered via the Internet. These phones can also remotely link to stationary servers and workstation computers back at home or in the office, offering the user operational access those computers as well.

As mobile devices sweep the market, the speed and functionality increases, the size decreases, and broadband communication providers strive to keep up with the ever increasing capabilities these devices offer, your business can benefit now.