Apple's Ipods have almost become icons. Furthermore, it is amazing to see the many tools, softwares, objects that have been designed around the Ipod and its little brother the Ipod Mini.
Now a new trend is emerging fast: Podcasting. What is it? Well, this is about using your Ipod or any portable MP3 player to time-shift audio broadcasts. According to Podcasting News, "Podcasting lets users subscribe to an audio program and have it automatically downloaded to an MP3 player. Once it's on your portable audio player, you can listen to it whenever you like. The beauty of podcasting is that it takes care of keeping your MP3 player current automatically."
The implications of Podcasting are mind-boggling (not to say mind-blogging). Indeed, suppose you missed your favorite radio show, no problem you can download it later on your MP3 player and listen to it in your car or in the train. You want to start your own radio channel. Easy, use Podcasting to broadcast your shows on the Net. A famous example is Adam Curry.
Assume you're a faculty member and you run a blog (alas, not many do these days...), you can can tape your class and make it available in your blog as an MP3 download. Even better, you can make it available as an RSS feed easily downloadable and readable by a software like ippoderx. Not convinced, well again read carefully what Podcasting News has to say about religions and priests who quickly embraced the Podcasting bandwagon. Podcasting News calls it Godcasting ! (Interestingly enough, religion seems to have been faster on this one than the Adult industry and in any case faster than business schools!).
Joking apart, Podcasting should be (along with Cyberlibris and faculty blogs of course!) the next killer app in business schools and in any place where people do care about pedagogy and message delivery. After all, when you think of it, is not it sad that knowledge that is disseminated in a classroom gets lost forever?
Don't know where to start? Well, start here and here.
Podcasts have already been introduced in Cyberlibris. Just check Newswatch (finance radio news) and blogwatch (books section: CEO Read podcasts). 
Here is a sample of what you could expect. This is drawn from James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras best-selling Built To Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. Just click on B-T-L Podcast.
And this is only the beginning!
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