The last in the trinity of blogs, wikis and podcasting is rather young, but I’ll predict will find a huge following as well - again giving the masses their own soap box. Here’s policy analyst Annalee Neitz with the low-down:

Blogging meets radio meets iPod. Subscribe to all the prerecorded radio shows you like. Podcasting apps download them to your computer and sync them to a portable player. Want to be a pod star? You can record your own podcasts and share them online - it’s almost as easy as blogging.

People podcast for a lot of reasons - to expound on obscure topics, showcase their best friends’ music or spoken word routines, and break into radio without buying an antenna tower. It’s also a haven for hobbyists. Geoghegan, host of Reel Reviews, says he never would have had the time for Internet broadcasting if it hadn’t been as easy as “clicking a button and talking.”

Although podcasts don’t conform to any formula, their hosts do share one passion: circumventing the restrictions imposed on traditional broadcasting by industry and government. Partly in political protest and partly out of legal necessity, podcast music tends to favor songs that aren’t policed by the Recording Industry Association of America. Because listeners download each show, producers aren’t eligible for the kinds of broadcast licenses available to radio stations and webcasters. They have to license each song the same way iTunes does. The upside is that they don’t have to conform to the FCC’s broadcast decency regulations: They’re downloads. As a result, they contain large doses of what George Carlin once dubbed the “seven dirty words you can’t say on television.” Read the full article…