By Colby Horton
Shop Site of the Month
Rapid Repair Auto Center - Houston
www.rapidrepairautocenter.com
This site offers a nice layout and several innovative features throughout. A scrolling photo gallery at the bottom of the home page gives visitors a quick glimpse at the inside of the shop. Customers can make an appointment online and create a personalized page for their vehicle. A comprehensive list of questions and answers make this site informative. The shop's list of services is placed right on the home page, making information quickly accessible.
Web Wise
Podcasting Changes Radio for the Digital Era
For all of you keeping up with Internet industry vernacular, the new buzzword surfacing online is "podcasting." And although a relatively new term, it has certainly gained momentum in adoption and usage in the past year. Podcasting is a method of publishing user-created audio broadcasts over the Internet, usually created in an MP3 format, allowing users to subscribe to a feed, much like Really Simply Syndication (RSS) news feeds that have become increasingly popular over the past year. One year ago this month, the term "podcasting" was first used in a how-to article that surfaced on the Internet. By July 2005, a Google search for "how to podcast" returned more than 2 million results.
What is this new phenomenon? Podcasting is a word that combines the words "broadcasting" and "iPod," the popular mp3 audio player created by Apple. However, the term is a little misleading since podcasting, or listening to a podcast, requires an iPod or any other portable music player.
Popular radio programs have been broadcast over the Internet for years. But podcasting is a little different than the standard Internet radio broadcasts. Think of a podcast as listening to your favorite program "on demand." Think how a desktop news aggregator works. The user subscribes to a set of news feeds, and then can easily view new information from all of the feeds together, or each feed separately. Podcasting works the same way, with one exception. Instead of reading the new content on a computer screen, you listen to the new content on an iPod, other MP3 player, or directly through your computer.
More and more mainstream media outlets are gearing programming for podcasting. iPodder (www.ipodder.org) and Podcast.net (www.podcast.net) are two of the first sites dedicated to finding podcasts. The site categorizes podcasts for the user, including several automotive-related podcasts. General Motors uses podcasts on its blog site (fastlane.gmblogs.com). If you're a user of Apple's iTunes software, you can subscribe and download podcasts directly from the software's Music Store. And several traditional broadcasters, such as National Public Radio, FOX and the BBC, are podcasting everyday.
Watch for podcasting to become even more popular within the coming months as
more and more companies broadcast their messages through podcasts.
Net Numbers
The number of iPods sold in the past three years tops 10 million.
Source: Duke University
ASA Web Ways
AutoInc. Podcasting from Las Vagas
As part of the 10th annual NACE Online Daily News, AutoInc. will conduct several podcasts during the International Autobody Congress and Exposition (NACE) Nov. 2-5 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. Podcasts will include Thursday morning's Opening General Session featuring former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani, award presentations and various press conferences held throughout the event. To hear the podcasts, visit www.NACENOW.com!
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Net Worth is written by Colby Horton, ASA's electronic communications manager. He can be reached at (800) 272-7467, ext. 234, or by e-mail at colbyh@asashop.org.
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