James Delahunty
11 Oct 2005 22:46
Due to the growing popularity of Podcasts, Yahoo has launched a site to assist people in finding and listening to podcasts. The site allows users to the audio programmes which are designed to be stored and listened to using a portable player. It also allows users to review podcasts and rate them. In addition Yahoo said it was working on software to help people produce their own podcasts.
Podcasts are basically audio programmes that can be subscribed to, downloaded and listened to on portable music players. They have been likened to DIY radio shows. Some big corporations including the BBC are using podcasts to lets users get programmes they might have missed. There are already sites setup with just the purpose of searching for podcasts but Yahoo is the first of the Internet giants to build a site dedicated to it.
"Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the future of search is in audio and video. Searching through text on the Internet has really reached a maturity point," Phil Leigh, an analyst for Inside Digital Media told the Associated Press. "If you look 10 years down the road, everyone is going to be searching for podcasts." Right now, it is estimated that less than 5 million people around the world regularly download podcasts, with the vast majority of the public, even many who could be labeled as "geeks", unaware of what a podcast even is - or that such a thing exists.
Source:
BBC News