The New York Times has a piece on podcasting, dated July 3, following the hugely successful launch of Apple's support for the idea. This highlights the competition between existing paid-for offerings from companies such as Audible.com and free podcasts:
Who will keep our ears well filled with portable entertainment while we move about? On the one ear are older media repackaged and sold in digital form, like music and audio versions of books and magazines. On the other are podcasts, the audio programming from the masses that has popped up in the past year, available free.
There's the usual whinge about the stupidity of the name ("Podcast" is an ill-chosen portmanteau that manages to be a double misnomer) but it's catchy so we're probably stuck with it....
