Value of podcasting

Podcasts lack in rapid comprehension they make up for in portability, emotional context and overall tone.

People who are unable to read, have reading disabilities or enjoy the multi-tasking ability podcasts provide -- like driving and listening -- outweigh podcasting's limitations, even for delivering information vs. entertainment.

The capabilities of podcasting are just beginning to be imagined. In the next year or so, we'll probably see creative entrepreneurs and smart technologists make it easy for podcasters to create hyperlinks to pre-defined cues in audio files, deliver on-the-fly closed captioning, automatic index creation, or full-text transcripts.

Those innovations will probably change the world of audio books, too. It's always fun to hear from a reader who prefers audio books to written ones; they say audio books can open just as many doors of insight and learning as written books do. It's the new-and-improved convergence.

Podcasting is very quickly flattening the broadcasting industry, and technology is sure to rush in and marry the needs of people like John, who want quick comprehension, to those of us who believe that podcasting trumps ASCII text in delivering short bursts of emotional impact and context.

Wow! It is hard to add more to this insightful post.

Via Church of the Customer.