It's about to blow world of online audio through roof as every Tom, Dick and Shirley can now operate a high powered Internet Radio station providing on-demand audio (and shortly, video) with nothing more than a microphone, simple software, and a little imagination.

Just like cable TV in 1980's gave smaller networks and individuals a voice on television, podcasting gives individuals a voice (literally) through online audio.

Podcasting is actually audio form of "blogging," where individuals share their thoughts in writing over time on a dynamic webpage known as a "blog."

With blogging, subscribers and other blog publishers subscribe to and cross promote each other's content by linking to and writing about each other.

With podcasting, author shares his or her thoughts in audio form (MP3) and subscribers download and listen to audio either on their computers, burn files to CD, or transfer files to one of increasingly popular portable MP3 players.

In fact, term "podcasting" draws its name from iPod, created by Apple Computers.

Initially you might think only people podcasting are geeks and computer nerds, but that's not case.

If you imagine "talk radio" meets "free cable access" then you have and idea of what pocasting is now and how it could evolve in future.

Right now, any idiot (like me) with a microphone and something to say can create an online radio show.

This type of access to media that reaches a world-wide market enables smaller, niche publishers to develop a world-wide following that just isn't monetarily feasible in traditional mass-media.