Create your own podcast

You can use a program as simple as Windows' Sound Recorder to capture your podcast, but something a bit more sophisticated would be better.

One popular podcast tool is Audacity, an open-source audio editor and recorder. It's available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and it includes a number of useful features and plug-ins.

If you want something even more podcast-friendly, check out Industrial Audio Software's aptly named iPodcast Producer. This start-to-finish solution lets you record and edit podcasts, create Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, and upload the finished product via a built-in FTP client. It's priced at $249.95, but at press time the company was set to unveil a more consumer-oriented version, iPodcast Creator, for $89.95.

If you decide to use Audacity, download and install the LAME MP3 encoder so that you can save your recordings as MP3 files, the preferred format for podcasts.