What is a Podcast?
Podcasting lets you automatically receive the latest episode of your chosen programme as soon as it's available. You need to "subscribe" to receive a podcast, rather like you might subscribe to a magazine and get it delivered each week. Most of the Lifestyle PodNetwork's podcasts are free, and you can stop receiving the files at any time.
In order to sign up for a podcast you need an internet connection and a piece of podcast software which is usually available free of charge. This software can check the Lifestyle PodNetwork for new episodes and automatically download them for you.
For more information you can visit Wikipedia.
How to Subscribe
You will need an internet connection; and a piece of podcast software or an RSS feed reader (see Related Links).
How you subscribe will vary depending on which software you have chosen. Three pieces of software popular with our listeners and viewers are iTunes, Juice and Doppler.
You can also subscribe using a web-based “feed reader” such as My Yahoo or Google Reader. These work in a similar way to the podcast software but are online rather than application-based and you need to have an account - they're usually free and easy to set-up but you will need an email address.
To subscribe the first thing you need to do is add the "feed" of the podcast to your software (or online reader). The feed is where the software will go to each time it wants to check for a new episode.
You can find the feed for any Lifestyle PodNetwork podcast in the green subscribe box.
Clicking the iTunes subscription will take you into your Apple iTunes software, to allow you to subscribe.
View the RSS feed by clicking the RSS box, or copy the feed URL and paste it in your podcast player of choice.
Alternatively, click the RSS feed URL below the Subscribe options to copy and paste the link into your player.
The subscribe box
You will need to copy this feed address and paste it into your podcast software. How you do this will depend on your software, but you should look out for buttons or links that say "Add" or "Subscribe".
Do I have to pay for podcasts?
Most of the podcasts on the Lifestyle PodNetwork are free. We also have some premium paid-content on the network, but this content is clearly marked and must be purchased before it can be downloaded. You will be clearly notified if any charges are applicable and you get the choice of whether to pay and subscribe to this premium content or not.
Find out more about premium content.
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