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What is podcasting all about?
Podcasting
is a process that puts audio files (or “podcasts”) online, and allows
software to find and download the files to a computer or personal media
player.
What is a podcast?
Podcasts are programs that you can download to your computer
or your personal media player and listen to at your own convenience.
Using podcast software such as LMAC RSS Reader,
you can subscribe to available radio shows, listen to music or even
learn Spanish. The software will automatically check for and download
new programs to either your computer, or your media player such as
iTunes.
Accessing a podcast feed is just like accessing an RSS
feed, in that you subscribe to a feed of a podcaster. The difference
between podcast feeds and RSS feeds is that you receive audio content
instead of text content. More info: Wikipedia
'podcasting' entry.
Getting Started
To begin accessing podcasts you'll need to download LMAC RSS Reader podcasting software and
a media player that supports the mp3 file format, for example, iTunes.
Example of adding a Podcast to LMAC RSS Reader (click images
to enlarge screen shots)
Step 1 - Find and add a podcast feed into
Tristana
 Open LMAC RSS Reader and locate your podcast RSS or Atom feed
by either entering a search word in the "Search web for feeds:" text
input box at the top of the page, or type in the URL where the feed
is located in the "Address:" text input box mid-way down the page.
Now find the orange RSS or XML feed icon on the web-page shown in
the Topic Panel (bottom right), hover over the icon and right-click
your mouse to select "Add feed to LMAC Reader". If you are using your
browser outside of Tristana Reader, you can add a feed by simply left-clicking
over the orange feed icon and dragging it into the "Folder Panel"
of LMAC Reader. Alternatively, with some browsers you will need to
right-click and select "Copy Link Location" and then click "Add" once
you confirm the URL.
Step 2 - Queue files for download
 To view and manage your downloaded media files, click on "View
/ Downloads" from the top pull-down menu to open the "Downloads" Panel
at the bottom of LMAC Reader. You will see that the "When Idle" tab
is opened by default - which means that these downloaded files are
"queued" for download when your PC is idle (ie. no keystrokes for
15 minutes). You will also notice that there is the destination directory
indicated where the file will be saved to your computer, which can
be. You can have attachments downloaded immediately by changing preferences
in the "View / Attachments and Podcasting... / General Options" menu.
Step 3 - Download files to your PC
 To begin downloading an attachment, select the file in the
"Downloads" window and click the green arrow to "Start" the download.
If you click on the "Priority" tab, you will see the downloads in
progress, with their % complete, file size and the file destination
all indicated. At any time, you can stop all downloads by clicking
on the circle with the red slash (No Downloads), or view downloads
that were blocked as potentially harmful in the "Blocked" tab. Once
the downloads are complete, they will then appear in the "Completed"
tab area. Note that at any time, if you double-click a topic in the
Channel Panel (top right) you will automatically start to play the
attachment in your default media player (ie. iTunes, QuickTime).
Step 4 - Playing your media file
When in the "Completed" tab, you can now highlight the
download you want to play, and click the green arrow to "Start" to play
that file in your default media player. A warning pop-up reminder will
ensure that you meant to begin downloading your file. You may with to view
more information a file by highlighting and clicking the "i", or opening
up that file in Windows Explorer by clicking on the open file icon. To
"Clear Completed" files, click on the green check mark to empty your
folder of all downloaded attachments.
Options for iTunes and other media players
 If you wish to change the directory of saved podcasted files
or automatically add downloaded music or audio files into iTunes,
you can set this option in "View / Attachments and Podcasting..."
and click on "Podcasting Options". You may also wish check the option
to immediately synchronize your iPod with the download files. Other
options are available for automatically populating Windows Media Player
or WinAmp play lists with downloaded music or audio files.
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