Discovering Podcasts
The first step in order to download and listen to free podcasts is by going to the iTunes store, that is on the far right of the iTunes navigation bar. Then, select the Podcast page, you can even search specific podcasts by using the search tool. As well, another feature that the Podcasts page in iTunes Store allows you to do, is to search for the Top Podcasts, either audio or video, or even by category. In addition, this allows you to find more of your favorite podcasts by clicking on the author of the podcast.
Playing podcasts
There are various options to listen or view your podcasts. You can stream an episode directly from iTunes or you can also download it. As well, another good option, is subscribing to a podcast you like, and therefore, new episodes will be downloaded automatically. By using iCloud, you can resume the viewing or listening of the podcast in another device from the one from which you paused it.
Whenever iTunes
encounters a problem when downloading a podcast episode, one will see and exclamation mark to
the left of the title of the episode. Do not worry, this means that the person
uploading the podcast is having problems with the uploading of the file, and
the episode will be available in about a day.
In order to know
whether you have watched the podcats entirely, watched it half way, or a
quarter of it, there is a blue circle that indicated how much of the podcast
you have watched. This circle disappears once you have watched it entirely.
iTunes also allows you
to change the EQ setting for playback which may be handy when you are listening
to amateur podcasts since distracting noises may be heard in the background of
the audio.
Managing Podcast
Subscriptions
By default, iTunes
does not play another podcast when one has finished playing. Therefore, there
is an option of creating a podcast playlist, or even a Smart Playlist which
allows you to include podcasts with many different kind of filters, such as
artist, genre, episode length and many more. In order to build an all-podcast
Smart Playlist, click on New, and then on Smart Playlist from the File menu.
Another similar
service is creating your own station. In My Station, you can create a
personalized station of your favorite podcasts in which new episodes will be
downloaded automatically, and choose from which podcast you want it to play
from. There is also an option, marked by a gear icon, that allows you to save
the podcasts you like. By using the “Episodes to keep” menu, you can select
those that you want to keep in your library. In addition, click the Do Not Auto
Delete button in order for the podcasts to remain in your library.
You can as well
subscribe to podcasts on the Internet that are not in the iTunes store by
choosing Subscribe to Podcast from the file menu, and the only thing you need
to do is enter the URL, and then the podcast will begin to download
automatically.
One can also choose
the frequency at which iTunes looks for new episodes. This can be changed from
weeks, to days, to hours by going to Podcast Settings and changing the rate of
search.
As easy as it is to
subscribe, you can as easily unsubscribe from the podcast. You do this by
selecting the podcast and clicking on the Unsubscribe button. As well, iTunes
stops downloading episodes automatically once it sees there are more than 5
episodes without watching, in order for the viewer to have time to catch up.
Sharing Podcasts
Sharing podcasts with
iTunes is easy. Although it requires having an iTunes account, you can just
send an email to a friend with the link to the podcast by clicking on the
triangle next to the Subscribe button and selecting Tell a Friend, or just
simply copying the link and sending it to your friend. In addition, the sharing
can be done via the popular social networks Facebook and Twitter, and this is
done in the same way as mentioned above, but instead just clicking Share on
Faceboor or Share on Twitter. Lastly, you can share an individual podcast you
have already downloaded by dragging this podcast to your desktop, and then
sending this .pcast file to your friend as an attachment via email.
There is also an
option of exporting a list of all your subscription. This is useful especially
when introducing someone to podcasting. To export a list of your subscriptions,
right-click on Podcasts in the Sidebar in iTunes and select expoert. Choose
OPML as the format since it is a mostly recognized format for sets of
subscriptions. Then name the file and save it, and then send it to yourself or
your friend as an attachment. In order to subscribe to an OPML file, choose the
Add to Library option and choose the OPML file you have, and iTunes will begin
to download the episodes automatically.
I hope you have enjoyed this post and that you found it useful in order to start with your podcasting!
