Channels
Information
- What is a podcast?
- What do I need to listen to/watch a podcast?
- Where can I download podcast software?
- What do the icons on this site mean?
- What is RSS?
- How do I get the RSS feed to work?
Podcasting is simply a way of distributing audio and video files through the internet, allowing the media to be downloaded by people and played back through their computer or a portable media device like an ipod or other MP3 or video player.
What do I need to listen to/watch a podcast?
To listen to or watch a podcast all that is required is a computer. You can use a PC or an Apple computer, as long as it has software to play MP3 files or video files you can listen/view podcasts. If you are running Windows on your PC, it will come pre-installed with Windows Media Player which will be able to play podcasts. If you have an Apple then it will have itunes which will play MP3 files.
To subscribe and download podcasts you will need an Internet connection and some podcast software. Most of the software is available for free and we have listed some sites below. If you have an Apple computer with itunes, the latest version comes with a podcast directory allowing you to subscribe to and download podcasts. For detailed information look at the help file. If you have a PC running Windows the different software available have different setups. However there are some basic instructions below. For further information check the software helpfile.
If you run itunes on your PC or Apple computer you can search for Social Enterprise in the Podcast Directory, and this will bring up the feed. You can then subscribe to this.
Where can I download Podcast software?
Software for subscribing to and downloading podcasts is commonly known as aggregators. Links to some popular ones are listed below.
What do the icons on this site mean?
This site contains various icons which tell you information about the podcast.
This icon is a standard icon for RSS feeds. You may have noticed this icon on other sites on the internet. What this tells you is you can subscribe to an "RSS Feed" for this podcast and have any new podcasts automatically delivered to your podcasting software. On this site we have a feed for each individual channel, as well as one on the home page which gives the latest 10 podcasts from all the channels. Click on the icon which will then display the RSS feed address. Further details below.
This icon shows the podcast is a chapter of a group of podcasts. This group of podcasts may be a large interview that has been split up into smaller files, or it may be similar podcasts from one organisation that are all related. To view all the podcast chapters in the group click on the icon.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. The great thing about RSS feeds and the main point to remember is that they allow news and information to be “Pushed” to your computer, instead of you having to hunt through different websites and “Pull” the information in.
Prior to RSS, if you wanted to keep up to date with news headlines you would have to keep going back to the news site and checking for new headlines. With RSS, if you subscribe to the feed for the news headline page your reader will automatically check for you, at a time you specify, to see if there are any new headlines. It will then list these for you to view. This way you can subscribe to many different RSS feeds from different sites and simply check your reader to see if any new stories or information has been posted on any of the sites.
An RSS feed is a file that contains channels which are different categories of news items that have been established by the web site. For example the BBC has news items categorised by region, or news items by topic. Within each channel there are the news items representing each news story, the feed lists that news items and the details related to it. Such details are the title of it, description, the date of when the news item was created. It may and usually does include a link that takes you to the news item on the web site itself.
Special RSS feeds can also contain audio and video information if the news item happened to be related to a band or singer. The audio/video can also be downloaded from the web site automatically using the RSS feed and be saved to your computer.
A typical RSS feed looks quite complicated, like this:
<?xml version = "1.0"?>
<rss version = "2.0">
<channel>
<title>Channel 1</title>
<item>
<title>Item 1</title>
<description>Item 1 of the RSS feed</description>
<link>http://www.link.co.uk/1.html</link>
</item>
<item>
<title>Item 2</title>
<description>Item 2 of the RSS feed</description>
<link>http://www.link.co.uk/2.html</link>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>
However as we mentioned, you don’t need to worry about this. Just copy the URL in the address bar of your internet browser and paste it into your reader. Then add the feed and it will do the rest!
How do I get the RSS feed to work?
The feed that is on the web site is a file that the reader uses, the reader will require a web site address of where the feed is. If you look in the address bar of your internet browser it should have an address like:
http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/front_page/rss.xml
The first thing you need to do is copy the complete address from the address bar. In the reader there should be an option to add a new feed, click on this option and enter the address mentioned above. The reader will then contact the web site and ask it for the latest news items and download them automatically for you to listen to at your leisure. The reader is usually set up to automatically check periodically for new items. This feature makes sure that you are kept up to date with any new podcasts without you having to go back to the webpage and check all the time.