by Jason Salas, KUAM News Tuesday, February 22, 2005 Subscribe to Jason's newsfeed   E-mail this article Printable version KUAM Toolbar Web Widgets Get RSS headlines

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The next evolution of the Internet as you know it is on the way. (Actually, it's already here.) No longer are online users going to be forced to receive data en masse with no customization as pure text. Very soon, you'll be able to access KUAM.COM's new podcasts, accessing our most popular online content as downloadable MP3 audio files.

Podcasting is a relatively new format of content delivery, having been conceived as a progression of the Rich Site Summary (RSS) standard to include multimedia. We currently offer our news headlines as an XML feed, and have been hugely successful with it. Now, we're expanding our feeds to include audio.

If you're a news junkie, stay on top of the latest Guam current events or get the latest gossip and lowdown from our radio talkshows. And being designed for mobility, you'll have our content with you wherever you go on your portable media device.

Despite the name, podcasts aren't limited to Apple's iPod. Audio files can be downloaded onto any mobile media player, a desktop computer, laptop, or other digital device capable of playing MP3 files. We'll feature special downloadable audio of round-the-clock KUAM News casts for the latest island happenings, comedy skits from the Malafunkshun Boyz, and talk radio casts from the Positively Local show with Tony Blaz, and our sportstalk show, JockTalk 61, with yours truly.

We'll also feature lots of podcast-only content you won't find anywhere else, like interviews, specials, contests and various programming features.

This is dramatically different to anything we've offered to this point. Our web content requires you to physically browse to KUAM.COM and read text. Our streaming webcasts in our Archives can't be downloaded, so you're forced to sit at your computer to watch a newscast. And the key necessity of our live streaming radio broadcasts is tuning in at the right time to catch your favorite shows. The beauty of podcasting is that you access our stuff, and listen to it whenever you want, wherever you are, as many times as you want. Being asynchronous in nature, podcasts aren't time-sensitive, so you'll never miss out on anything.

We've empowered you to get the latest information about Guam and then get on with your life - you can get the day's latest headlines and listen to them while you workout or in the background while on the job, walking through the mall, or in line at the bank.

But the best thing is the personalization podcasts deliver. You subscribe once to receive only the audio feeds you want, and can change your profile at any time. It's all free and takes mere seconds to setup.

You can download the freeware cross-platform application iPodder either for Windows, for the Mac or for BSD/Linux, even if you don't have an iPod. There are also tons of podcast apps you can download, so Google the topic and see what you can find to try it out.

So keep an eye out for our new podcasts! I'm quite sure you'll enjoy them. If you'd like to try the KUAM.COM podcasts as a beta tester, shoot me an e-mail and I'll send you the information you'll need to get our stuff. Enjoy!