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What is a podcast?

For the longest time I have wanted to get into podcasting. I have good excuses like my computer equipment is pathetically out of date, my hard drives are too small (size does matter!) and filling up, and time is a commodity (video and audio take time!). But really, the geek in me has held me back the most. I understand the definition of podcasting:

A podcast is a collection of digital media files which is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers. [Wikipedia]

That was not satisfying enough for me. I did not want to "podcast" until I could be certain that I was using the word correctly! Did quality of video matter? Length? What if my RSS stream occasionally had text only posts? Does Seesmic count? What about Youtube? Or Utterz?

Tonight I posed the question on Seesmic and had the pleasure of having the CTO and creator of http://podcast.com/ give the definitively best answer to the question. I really appreciated Kosso‘s answer! It nailed it for me.

(Someone should put that video in Wikipedia under podcast)

Update: David Jacobs of The Connected World gave a great answer from a coffee shop! Watch David Jacobs reply on Seesmic!