Podcasting is an automatic mechanism by which multimedia computer files are transferred from a server to a client which pulls down XML files containing the Internet addresses of the media files. In general, these files contain audio or video, but also could be images, text, PDF, or any file type.
For this section I'll be talking about audio. It seems at the moment that more museums have a podcast than an actual blog, so this may be familiar ground
- why is podcasting easier / more prevalent in museums?
Audio podcasts are just an RSS feed with one or more enclosure tags describing the attached audio. The real "magic" comes on the client side, with smart software such as iTunes automatically transferring new podcasts to the mp3 player.
The Walker is using a combination of podcast technology - our Art on Call cellphone audio tour project "podcasts" each new audio piece as it is added. This is not really a true podcast since it's not really time-based, we use it more as a convenient way for users to download the tours via a "push" scenario.
We also just completed a truer podcast for the Women With Vision film series - each morning when a filmmaker's piece was going to be shown we would podcast an interview with the filmmaker.
Radio mnartists.org
Women with Vision