What is a Podcast and Can I Listen to It?
Let’s get something out of the way right away: No, you don’t need an iPod to listen to our podcast or watch our video podcasts. You can listen to/watch the podcasts on virtually any computer (including the one you’re sitting in front of while reading this) or MP3 device.
A podcast is just like any other free audio or video file on the internet, but with one difference: You can subscribe to it if you want to. So you can:
- Listen to or watch a podcast on your computer just by clicking on the link in each episode’s show notes. (For example, click here to listen to InDesignSecrets-015.mp3 (14.2M, 26:33 minutes)
- You can download the file to your hard drive and listen to it (or watch it) with some other software or hardware device by right-clicking (or Control-clicking with a one-button mouse on a Mac) on the link and choosing Save Target As (or Save Link As…, or whatever language your Web browser uses)
- If you like the show and you want to listen to it regularly, you’ll probably want to use one of the many podcast programs to subscribe to it. The easiest one is the free iTunes program for Windows or Macintosh. Our podcast is listed in the iTunes Music Store along with links to all our shows and a button that lets you subscribe so you’ll always have the most recent one available. (Don’t panic: Even though they’re in the iTunes Store, our podcasts are free!)
Note that we also now provide a free transcription of our podcasts, so you can read them instead of listening to them. You’ll find a link to the transcript at the top of each episode’s show notes.
(For those of you who are wondering: Our podcasts are currently audio-only, but that doesn’t mean we’re ignoring folks who want video. Come back soon for some exciting developments!)
Or, click here to see and hear Uncle Seth’s way of saying the same thing, but in a much more entertaining way.