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Is podcasting developed in Russia? Are there any podcasts worth listening to in this country? If so, what are they?

If we will compare podcasts in Russia and in Western Europe or USA, in Russia it is not very popular. Some radio station have their own podcasts of informational program (Echo of Moscow, Mayak etc). I don’t know exactly if there are some podcasts worth to listen, I think it depends on subject. As for me I like listen to podcasts of news programs or programs about m favorite music groups and singers.

  1. The Place of Podcasting in the Field of Contemporary Mass Media.

Podcasting is a type of new digital media. The essence of podcasting is in the process of creating and spreading of audio- or video-files (podcasts) in the Internet. They are in the style of radio and TV programs. They can be on different topics and have different periodicity of publication. Podcasts are subscribed to and downloaded with help of special programs, such as Zune Software, iTunes, Rhythmbox, gPodder and other. They can be also streamed online to a computer or mobile device. The word is a neologism made up from the words "broadcast" and "pod" from the success of the iPod, as podcasts are often listened to on portable media players. The term “podcasting” first appeared in an article by Ben Hammersly, the first one to use the term, in an issue of The Guardian. However, Adam Curry, the former MTV show host, is believed to be the first person to come up with the idea of putting content into small files and releasing them episodically to the public.

A list of all the audio or video files are situated on the distributor's server, and the listener or viewer uses special client application software, known as a podcatcher, that can access this Internet source, check it for updates, and download any new files in the series. This process can be automated so that new files are downloaded automatically. Files are saved locally on the user's computer or other device ready for offline use, giving simple and convenient access to the content.

It was said by Richard Berry, the author of the book “Will the iPod Kill the Radio Star?”, that podcasting is not only a combined medium that brings together audio, the web and portable media player, but also a destroying technology that has made some people working in the radio business reconsider some established practices and preconceptions (предубеждения) about audiences, consumption, production and distribution. This idea of destruction of the classic media worries people because no one person owns the technology; it is free to listen and create content, which is different from the traditional model of media (so called “gate-kept”, when reporter decides which sources are chosen to include in a story or editor decides which stories are printed or covered) production tools. It is a horizontal media form: producers are consumers and consumers become producers and communicate with each other.

The history of podcasting begins in 2004 year, when big business started releasing its information over the internet via podcasts, and the public began to take interest in podcasting. One of the first companies to make a device specifically used for transporting media such as podcasts was i2Go. They claimed that with their eGo player, in combination with their MyAudio2Go.com website, that users would be able to download episodes of sports, weather, music, and news right to their device, and take it wherever they want. The device also came with software that could automatically download content to the personal computer and whenever the device was connected, would automatically download to the device. But the company stopped its work in the end.

RSS played the key role in the development of podcasting. The abbreviation has different decoding, for example Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. It is a family of formats used to publish frequently updated works - such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video - in a standardized format. In other words, if you want to look through the content with help of RSS, there will be nothing excess – only the content and the date of publication, designed as simply as possible. Dave Winer created the first actual RSS Feed. The feed was able to take information from several types of media, but was not very popular at the beginning. He and some other people, including Adam Curry, the former MTV show-host, developed the idea of audioblogging. Then there were attempts to create an application that gathered audio files and made them able to be streamed at several different locations. After this several other people took hold of this idea, and began to use it to their advantage. Today the oldest podcast still exists and is featured on Conversations Network, formerly IT Conversations.

Bloggercon, the first conference for web bloggers, was organized in 2003 by Dave Winer and his partners. The content of the conference featured new technology that was being developed by several of the pioneers of the podcasting and information technology field, and a celebration of the founders and creators of the technology. In 2004 many other people, including many major news and entertainment business started using the podcasting idea to present their products to the masses. While many of the early massively produced podcasting software was not very successful, the very first podcast software with a user-friendly look and feel was iPodderX, which later changed its name to Transistr, created by August Trometer and Ray Slakinski. They wanted to create the next generation of podcasting technology and user interface. After the creation of iPodderX, or Transistr, the market became flooded with other companies and software developers looking to create a similar way of getting their podcasts out to the public. Soon after the term “podcasting”, also known as audioblogging, had been taken up by the general public by way of several very known personalities who had adopted it for their own use.

Podcasts are used now in the Internet versions of popular newspapers, radio-stations and TV-channels. Newspapers often use podcasts to broadcast audio content from print interviews. The San Francisco Chronicle is believed to be the first major daily newspaper to start podcasting using an external website in February 2005.

The New York Times has 15 podcasts: 6 of them are about news and politics, the other ones are about science, food, fashion, literature, arts. Most of them are in the video-formats. There are usually two of the latest podcasts on the site, other ones you can download from iTunes Store for free. The hosts of podcasts are the reporters and the editors of the supplements to The New York Times. They provide information that isn’t published in the newspaper. Usually they invite famous people and speak about actual problems in the sphere they observe. The role of podcasts here is extension of audience, as podcasts can attract youth.

Some radio programs such as The Now Show and The News Quiz allow entire episodes to be downloaded as podcasts. We can see the same on the Echo of Moscow web-site. You can download here all the archives of the programs in the mp3 format, or listen to them on the site, subscribe on RSS-podcasts, adding the RSS-page in bookmarks. So if you missed your favorite program, you can listen to it at any time you like.

The web-site of NTV was the pioneer in video-podcasting. The channel started to cope with video-podcasting in October, 2005. At first there were only news, now you can watch all programs out on TV. You can subscribe on the podcasts and play them in iTunes.