If you were to ask someone on the street what podcasting is, most of them will not have any idea what you are talking about. They will ask if you said "broadcasting." You might explain to them that it is a special audio file that you can listen to on your MP3 player. But even then you would not be doing it justice. Here are some other ways of understanding what podcasting is.

Do you remember your childhood when the people in your household fought over the sections of the newspaper that had been delivered to your door? If you can imagine that same newspaper, rather than being delivered in one section to your front door, but being packaged up in individual sections for each member of your family, with the sections that are not read left out completely.

That is one way to think of podcasting: the information that you are interested in delivered to you, without the stuff you don't want. Some people have called podcasting TiVo radio.

Another way to think of podcasting is like a radio program that is only about your specific interests and when you click the link or synchronize your MP3 player with your computer, it gets downloaded to you automatically.

Its like youre the owner of the radio station. You tell the DJ what you want to hear and theyll play it for you. All news? All sports? Regular updates on the financial markets? Entertainment news? Information on your industry? No problem, its all at your personal DJs fingertips and in moments its playing in your ears.

And a third way to think of podcasting is a targeted audio program for businesses to add value to their customers and prospects, and for organizations to pass information on to their users.

However you think of podcasting, other people will still give you a funny look because it is still in its infancy. In fact, the term podcasting was only coined in 2004! It wont be long, though.