Okay. I consider myself a pretty technology saavy person, I mean I do work for an IT company. And yes, I’ve had an iPod for ages but never really got into this “podcasting” business. Maybe I just didn’t get it. One thing I do know is that now that I’m into podcasting there’s no turning back.

Now I can listen to music and audio books, get sports updates, hear political theories and even take walking tours of places I’ve only dreamed of going — all whenever and wherever I want granted I remember to charge my iPod’s battery.

Try it. It’ll change your life. Well maybe not change your life, but definitely enhance it.

So what is a podcast really anyways? Think of it basically as a radio program. A podcast can last as little as a couple minutes or can be hours long consisting of a series of multiple episodes. As I mentioned before, the best part of a podcast is that you can listen to them after downlaoding them to your PC, MP3 player or plain and simply from a web browser.

When you find yourself a podcast that you like to listen to, you can even subscribe to it and all new shows will automatically appear on your computer as they are posted online. Crazy. How does that work? With a complimentary technology called an RSS Feed.

Upon subscription to a new podcast you will be promted to open a file that contains some background information about the podcast — nothing that you would be interested in, but information your computer finds very helpful.

This ‘RSS’ file is a little application that integrates with your web browser and tells your media device, whether Windows Media Player or iTunes or whatever other software you use, to stay up-to-date with the particular podcast and to seek out new episodes as they become available.

In order for your computer to read this RSS file, you need an RSS reader. The RSS feed you use is totally up to you and there’s numerous free options to choose from. Here at Internetrix, we all really like Sage. This ‘lightweight’ feed reader works as an extension to the Firefox browser. Integrating with Firefox’s bookmark system you retrieve your Podcast feed updates with the simple “Alt – S” keyboard combination.

If you use Internet Explorer, there are still numerous options to choose from. All with their own distinct features, each RSS feed acts in a similar manner to Sage. Some of these feed readers include MyYahoo, Bloglines, FeedLounge, Google Reader, NewsGator, Rojo and more. For a review of each reader’s distinct features, read TechCrunch’s “The State of Online News Readers”.

But we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here. How do you actually find the podcasts that you would like your RSS feed to seek out and update regularly? Too easy.

A simple Google search is all you need. If you have an interest, or a favorite band, or are keen on being kept up-to-date with commentary on some of the lastest happpenings in the Middle East, simply type that into Google as well as “and Podcasts”. Voila. Numerous podcasts will be yours for the taking.

Instead of searching, you can get started with a few of our favourites here at Internetrix - we've listed them and given them a bit of a profile too.