Right. Podcasting is just a piece of the replacement of radio by “on-demand audio.” Thanks to Tivo, podcasting and a slew of other digital technologies, combined with smaller, cheaper, faster electronics, media is finally coming into a new generation where we can see and hear what we want, when we want it. Thank goodness!

IMHO, Wired magazine is back and getting better and their recent cover story on this trend is more evidence of that editorial success. I don’t mind that every month they publish something from one of the most important intellectuals writing about digital rights et al, Lawrence Lessig. He’s well worth following.Read the coverage from the Wired cover story. It’s already online.

What is this? 1999? 😉

In the article, For a Start-Up, Visions of Profit in Podcasting NYTimes’ John Markoff stays sober in describing a mini-start up that’s making a move on the emerging market for podcasts. The most quotable quote, IMHO, attempts to provide perspective on how the leading commercial audio download service, Audible.com and podcasting may overlap (in the future, of course) with radio listeners:

“When I started Audible and we started signing up radio partners, people would ask me, ‘where does your technology leave radio?,’ ” said Donald Katz, Audible’s chairman. “Now it’s clear that the creative capacity that is out there greatly outstrips the capacity of the radio pipeline.”

And, here’s the good news, from my perspective, as described by Markoff:

“While still too much in its infancy to be considered an immediate threat to the radio industry, podcasting does present the prospect of a growing army of iPod-toting commuters who take programming decisions out of the hands of broadcasters and customize their own listening.”

Tinu Abayomi-Paul who writes for Search Engine Guide wrote a somewhat optimistic yet useful pitch, Why You’re Missing Out on Hundreds of Visitors If You Aren’t Podcasting which includes a link to her even more useful HowtoPodcast blog which includes a quite groovy little Flash movie, “The Easy Podcast Movie” which shows you how to do it in a few easy steps. $5/month and you can record yours on the phone. Maybe this is the revolutionary medium I hope it is and, of course, even those without iPods or other MP3 players can still listen on the Web.

OK. I admit it. Maybe podcasting IS the beginning of the personalized webcasting that I wrote about for years in Videography.

I was impressed with the NY Times coverage this weekend… snappy examples… Tired of TiVo? Beyond Blogs? Podcasts Are Here. I take as a sign of emerging yet premature maturity 😉 that there are already sites like Podcastalley.com and Podcastbunker.com, that review and rank podcasts.

I even download the iPodder podcast aggregator software, but I’ve not yet put it fully to use. Although, if you’re interested in learning more, you might check out Dave Winer’s (he’s one of the originators of the RSS, Really Simple Syndication format) well-linked definition of podcasting: What is Podcasting?