I’m writing this three-part column because I think it’s an exciting time for anyone who’s interested in consumer-level digital media tools. Not only are we seeing a profusion of inexpensive new gadgets for capturing media—witness Apple’s announcement Wednesday that the new iPod Nano will have a built-in digital video camera—but there are also many new Web-based services where creators can edit, enhance, share, and promote their media creations. The only way to keep up with all these new technologies is just to jump in and try them. So let’s get back to it:

4. Become an Amateur Podcaster with AudioBoo

When podcasting first took off four or five years ago, most podcasters tried to emulate radio hosts, kitting out their podcasts with fancy musical intros and outros and other audio goodies. Just to experiment with podcasting, you needed a pricey microphone and recording rig, audio editing software, and a working knowledge of RSS, iTunes, and other distribution methods. But thanks to a bit of good old technological progress, the barriers are now much lower. In fact, producing a podcast these days can be just about as easy as making a phone call. Which means that dictating a few off-the-cuff thoughts on your mobile device and uploading them to the Web is becoming a realistic alternative to blogging and other more familar forms of Web-based communication.

This is an excerpt from the September 11, 2009 installment of World Wade Wade. Click here to continue reading the column at Xconomy.

Radio Lab, a production of New York’s flagship NPR station, WNYC, isn’t just the best science and technology show on public radio. I think it’s a contender for the best contemporary radio show, period. I discovered it in 2006, when it was already in its second season. But thankfully, MP3s are available at iTunes and at the show’s website, and because there are only five new episodes per year, I had plenty time in the car to get through the show’s entire third and fourth seasons.

If you asked me to say what Radio Lab is about in one word, I would say “perception.” Jad Abumrad, the show’s lively host and producer, is the son of an endocrine surgeon and a research biologist, a graduate of the music and creative writing programs at Oberlin College, and a longtime radio journalist. Clearly, the only fate open to a person with a background this eclectic is to invent new interviewing, storytelling, and sound-editing techniques to explore big questions at the boundary of neuroscience, evolution, and philosophy—questions like, Where’s the part of my brain that’s me? Why do some songs get stuck in my head? Where does guilt come from? What makes placebos work so well? Can we erase memories? Why do we find zoos so fascinating? Why are people who deceive themselves more successful than those who don’t? Why do we sleep/dream/laugh/lie/age/die?

This is an excerpt from the July 11, 2008 installment of World Wide Wade. Click here to continue reading the column at Xconomy.