G. K. Chesterton: I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
The History of the iPod Podcast



What is now called a podcast traces its orgins to the

first ipod podcasts, the creation of distributed mp3 files

that could be downloaded and played on Apple's music

player, the iPod. When the iPod came out, and users

discovered what a wonderful thing it was for holding

music, some people had the idea of loading things that

weren't necessarily songs. Some of the people that got

their hands on the iPod took the route of reverse

engineering the iPod and loading on different firmware,

or operating system, but others had the idea of sharing

small sound files that could be played on the iPod. The

technology for distributing the files already existed,

with RSS feeds. RSS feeds were a means of generating

machine readable files that could share information

between a server and a user. Many blogs already used

them to keep readers up to date with the latest posts, but

some hopeful podcasters had the idea of enclosing links

to sound files within the RSS feed and downloading the

file to the computer.


With the change in RSS feeds, ipod podcast took off,

and podcasting became a popular way to share files.

Users saw podcasting as a way to become radio hosts,

or dj's, and a variety of podcasts began popping up.

Software was written to automatically check the RSS

feeds, extract the links to the podcast episodes, and

download the files. These programs became known as

podcast clients.


By this time, podcasting had moved beyond the ipod,

and they were not simply making an ipod podcast

anymore. Some people had figured out how to use even

the PlayStation Portable gaming console as a podcast

player. It was more difficult that downloading podcasts

to the ipod, since the PSP used a different format for it's

files, but PSP podcasts began popping up. In addition,

podcasting made inroads to the wider audience of

people without iPods, who simply saw podcasting as an

extremely convenient way to receive news, music, and

entertainment over the internet.


Today, while the iPod podcast type still exists, fewer

people subscribe to podcasts as a way of gaining

portable media files they can listen to anywhere.

Although that is still an attractive part of podcasting, it

seems to be eclipsed by the ease with which podcasting

has become a content delivery system. Now, podcasting

has become tied up with the rising number of audio and

video blogs, where blogging is done not by post, but

through media files uploaded to the blog. These blogs,

and podcasting in general, take advantage of the

shrinking cost of broadband internet connections, and

the rising number of people with high speed access to

offer a picture of the internet rich with multimedia files.

Create A Podcast

Although that would not have been feasiblequickly.

The comedian has a chance todialogue with them. Dircaster. The desire ofover estimated. hardly anyone is podcasting in order to profit from it. In addition, podcast directories often allow thefor users to find the best podcasts available.

Are Near Death Experiences Real? Read This To Find Out!
By ian hollander

 In this article we are going to examine the near death experience, and take a closer look at the explanations, and potential implications they may have in revealing what may await us all after we die. So if you are curious as to what may happen after death, read on as we explore this fascinating topic in a bit more detail!

The notion that we survive our bodily death is clearly not a new one. All societies and most religions have some sort of model for eternal life, a heaven, a hell and some form of perpetual life force.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is one of the earliest and most complete examinations of the human body, soul, and its transition from this life, to the next. Is this simply a "feel good" sort of story that we all want to believe, or could there truly be hard science applied to this pursuit?

Many scientists right now are engaged in exactly that: The pursuit of "hard evidence" that would support the notion that the human spirit does indeed survive the death of the physical self!

Let's take a quick look at some of the phenomena that may be suggestive that there is a bit more going on than the power of wishful thinking. Advances in medical technology have allowed an increasing number of patients to be resuscitated, or brought back from the brink of physical death.

Studies have shown, and many doctors have acknowledged, that approximately 20% of those who have been clinically dead DO report something that resembles a traditional nde, complete with a tunnel of light, a life review, seeing deceased relatives, and many other common elements. Often time's patients will describe things happening at a distance, in corridors or hallways that would be completely outside their field of view.

Many times a person having an nde will "come back" with information from a deceased relative they reported to have seen, that is later verified and would seemingly have been impossible for them to have known. Studies are taking place right now, by real scientists, in Emergency Rooms throughout the world, documenting and meticulously analyzing the information gleaned from these extraordinary encounters.

Of course there are skeptics, and people who believe the totality of the experience is relegated to a dying, desperate brain, eager to trick its "owner" into thinking better things await on the other side. But the more nuanced the science becomes, and the more researchers understand about the human brain, the less plausible many of these explanations seem to be.

Many have reported these rich, lucid and transformational experiences while having no brain activity at all, and nothing in the present model of brain science could explain how these people could have had any thoughts, let alone ones so powerfully transformational that their world view will never be the same.

It's exciting stuff for sure, regardless of what side of the spiritual street you fall. And it's one that we may never have a satisfactory consensus opinion on either, at least while we're still alive! The implications of course are simple, if you believe the NDE experience is real, our lives may indeed have far more purpose, and a lot longer spiritual shelf life than we may have previously imagined. And that's an interesting thought to ponder for sure. I know it is for me!

Are Near Death Experiences real, or are they simply wishful thinking? Find out the "truth" about NDE's and lots of other fascinating philosophical adventures at one of the fastest growing paranormal podcasts on the web, Skeptiko! Science at the Tipping Point.