Podcasting is like TiVo for your iPod. iPod + broadcasting = podcasting. Listen to web broadcasts anywhere, anytime. Podcast-receiving software makes it easy to have fresh new content delivered to your iPod automatically… around the clock.

Simply, podcasting is the sending of multimedia content (like MP3s or videos) to your computer based on a subscription to a particular feed. For example, let’s say that there’s a site that posts a new Seinfeld episode every day. Well, instead of going to that site and downloading the episode, you can subscribe to their feed and automatically receive the new episodes whenever they’re posted.

To get a little more technical, podcasting works with the help of RSS feeds that make use of enclosures. RSS enclosures are links or pointers to multimedia content. If a podcast-receiving program like iPodder sees a pointer to a multimedia file within an RSS feed, it will download that file automatically to your computer.

You don’t need an iPod to receive podcasts, but some podcast software is built to sync with your iPod automatically. If you have another brand of MP3 player, you’ll have the extra step of transferring fresh MP3s to your player of choice.

This technology works especially well for radio show broadcasts that have been saved as MP3s; which brings me to Adam Curry, the pioneer of this technology. Adam’s name might sound familiar because he was an MTV VJ in the late '80s. Adam worked to develop the podcasting concept and the iPodder, the first podcast receiver, using Applescript (Apple’s scripting language). Once Adam’s idea caught on, other developers began to code better programs to do the same thing and that’s where the iPodder came from.

If you have a portable MP3 player, this is a no-brainer: It’s the future of multimedia and radio. Here are some starting points if you’d like to be on the bleeding edge of this multimedia revolution:

• Adam Curry’s Weblog: Home of Adam’s pioneering podcast show: The Daily Source Code

• Copy this RSS feed link: http://live.curry.com/rss.xml into your podcast receiver to start getting Adam’s Daily Source Code show delivered to your iPod

• iPodder.org: A great resource for the latest news in the podcasting community.

• On a Mac, iPodderX is my podcast receiver of choice.

• iPodder: Another podcast receiver for Windows & Mac.

• Podcast.net: A great place to find new podcast MP3 feeds.