“While trolling your blog I saw mention of an Enhanced Podcast. What the heck is that? It looks like it is the same thing as your regular podcast.” Those words from a friend echo the statements of the average podcast listener out there not to mention a few podcasters. Enhanced podcast as a term have been recently bantered about as a step between vidcast and podcast. Cue the record screeching. “Vidcast? Podcast? Enhanced Podcast? A gamer know not these things.” Sorry I can’t help myself when it comes to butchering a famous Yoda quote. Let’s back up a little for a brief definition of vidcast and podcast.
A podcast is an audio file composed of speech and/or music that is shared across the net. It may be in iTunes or independently on a website. It usually is joined to a blog and usually has episodes. The host or hosts discuss a topic and share their knowledge, or lack thereof, with listeners. People listen to the podcast by subscribing in iTunes or putting the RSS Feed (web address for the podcast that automatically updates with a new episode) into a program that reads it. Most commonly this is iTunes.
A vidcast is a video file composed of speech, music, and video that is shared across the net. The best example is Diggnation where two guys are seen on camera talking about the most recently popular happenings on the Digg website. A vidcast allows people to show instead of tell. You can see someone paint a model or repair a car or build a computer or cook. A podcast only lets you hear them do those activities.
An enhanced podcast is the gray area between those two. It is a special audio file that also has pictures and links to webpages in it. These pictures break the podcast up into chapters much like a book. You can click on the picture to see a larger version or click on the link to go to the associated website. This is very popular with podcasts wanting to show you pictures or give walk throughs. If I wanted to show you how to assemble a plastic tactical marine I can take pictures of each step of the way. As I describe the steps to you in the podcast you would see the corresponding picture and a link to detailed instructions for that step. Or, I can show you pictures of each new release as I talk about it along with a clickable link to buy that item.
Enough of the technical what is an enhanced podcast. Now we need to move on to why. Or, more precisely why is the CWF Game Cast doing enhanced podcasts. Each Thursday we are releasing a new podcast. That isn’t changing but from time to time we’ll turn the regular podcast into an enhanced podcast. So there will be the regular podcast and the enhanced one. The enhanced one will have those pictures and links I mentioned. Doing this lets us put more in the podcast for listeners who don’t come to our blog.
