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So what is podcasting? Believe it or not, podcasting doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the ubiquitous little iPod. Podcasting involves installing a little program on your computer that will quietly hang around and regularly download the audio you've told it to, this is called subscribing.

To subscribe to a feed you just enter the web address of the feed into your podcasting program and then every week when a new story is ready to download, your podcasting program will go and get the audio for you and then put it in your music library, or wherever you want on your computer. You can then listen to it on your computer, put it on your MP3 player or burn a CD of it to listen to in the car or while riding your bike.

That is the beauty of podcasting: instead of being tied to your computer and being forced to listen to the piece right then, you can listen when you want. No streams, buffering or any of that to worry about. The audio is a file on your computer that you can listen to when you want and save in your music library for later.

So how to get started? Well, first download a podcast reader for your computer. Apple's iTunes is free, easy to use and works well on Windows and Macs. It can handle your whole music library and burn cds for you as well. Additionally it has a library of over 3000 podcasts included so you can really jumpstart your listening experience. If you are using Linux or just want to shop arond for other readers there are several available and most are free. You can start here by selecting your platform and then choosing a reader:

• Linux
• Windows
• Macintosh

Once you have installed a reader it's time to subscribe. Copy the address of the feed from your browser into your reader program's "new subscription" dialog. Once that is done, you're off. The reader will visit our site and download the latest podcast automatically.

Although we cannot offer assistance for individual software/operating system difficulties every podcasting-program available through the links provided offer some help or instructions, so as not to leave you in the dark. Most of them are developed by very small groups, so a quick email to the developer will almost always result in the solution to your problem. Also, you might try several different ones to find the feature set that you like the best.