Podcast Mania! Who's not on-Pod?

Podcasts went from scarcity to saturation in UNDER TWO YEARS! Plot that on an accelerating technology graph. In early 2004, IT Conversations was about the only podcast available, and the word podcast was not even used yet (and is still not in online or other dictionaries).

In February 2006, iTunes hundreds of podcast listings (some with video in addition to audio) are so numerous that additional categorization parameters would be helpful. One useful distinction would be the type of podcast, as in lecture, academic class, special interest group meeting, network radio show, personal podcast, etc. as well as whether the podcast is a recording of a live proceeding or content developed especially for podcast.

There are many interest areas which are on-pod, for example, the WineCast or the ScubaCast, and there are still plenty of untapped niches inviting podcast creators. Many individuals have their own podcast show just like they have their own website, blog, vlog, myspace and facebook page - it appears that Barry Diller (Web 2.0 2005 comments) was increasingly wrong about big media being the only arbiter and creator of the content that people want to consume.

Many universities and community groups are making their distinguished public lecture series available on-pod, interest groups and trade groups are posting audio and/or audio-visual recordings of their meetings (e.g.; BayCHI, St. Louis University Anesthesiology) and teachers and professors are posting recordings of their lectures for student review.

The diverse learning experiences from the globalization of podcasts are also significant, for example hearing the different European emphasis areas and issues with the UK's premier science organization, the Royal Society's lectures on-pod and IT Conversations' First Tuesday series from Switzerland.

Never is there more need for human augmentation technologies so that people can efficiently absorb all of the great available content in podcasts, books, blogs, websites, etc. Auto-summarizers are imperative.