Not a podcast

While reading Potomac Tech Wire email today (how about an RSS feed, please?), I read a news item stating that the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development (DBED) launched a weekly podcast. I don’t particularly care about what they had to say, but for some reason I was curious about this podcast. So, I click on the link and my fears are confirmed – the URL is straight to an MP3 file. A link to an MP3 file IS NOT a podcast! When are some people going to get this. What these folks have, for lack of a better term, is a weekly audio program. A podcast is an audio file enclosure in a feed. Simply placing an MP3 file on your web site does not mean you have a podcast. The whole point is to allow the end user the ability to get your MP3 file on a regular basis via a feed. If you expect someone to come back to your web site weekly to check out your “podcast”, I can assure you your listenership will be very low. Just another example of jumping on a bandwagon without having any clue as to what’s really going on.