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The phenomenon of podcasting is quite recent. It’s interesting to note some timeline trivia that attended its brief history starting in the early 21st century. It can be said that the dawning of the new millennium saw the birth of podcasting. Here are some of the highlights over the last 7 years.

October 2000

RSS feed started at around this time when two collaborators, software developer David Winer and internet jockey Adam Curry made use of a what is called an enclosure software format that allowed autoblogging and automatic updating of digital media files on the net for subscribers with RSS aggregators.

January 2001

RSS enclosure featured a Grateful Dead song in Winer’s news weblog. Seldom used, RSS was first used in the audio blogging site called Radio Userland that used an aggregator to send and receive files of what was then known as audioblogging. It only needed a way to send those files in a user’s audio player for podcasting to become a reality.

June 2003

Stephen Downes used aggregation and syndication in using RSS feeds of MP3 files for his Ed Radio web site, proving that it can be done.

September 2003

Winer demonstrated RSS enclosed feeds for colleague Christopher Lydon’s weblog. A former New York Times reporter, Lydon posted in-depth interviews with political celebrities which Winer released as RSS feeds.

October 2003

iTunes started carrying podcasts. The RSS enclosure was included in iTunes that for the first time. A script to download RSS enclosed MP3 files to iPod via iTunes was shown to work effectively.

February 2004

The term “podcasting” hasn’t entered the internet public’s consciousness. But it’s started to be used interchangeably with autoblogging. The term was first suggested by Ben Hammersley in the Guardian

October 2004

Wikipedia published its first online definition on Podcast. On the 18th of the same month. Google surpassed 100,000 hits on its search engine for the term “podcast.”

November 2004

After “how-to podcast” articles started appearing on the net, podcasting networks multiplied online.

January 2005

The term “podmercial” was trademarked in Las Vegas .

May 2005

The award-winning Podcasting: The Do It Yourself Guide by Todd Cochrane was released as the first book on the subject of podcasting.

June 2005

Podcasting was officially included in Apple’s iTunes 4.9 music software. A directory of podcast materials made its appearance in the iTunes Music Store.

December 2005

Sony announced support for podcasting in its Playstation Portable or PSP. It would use the RSS Channel feature of version 2.6 firmware…

The term “podcast” was recognized word of the year in the New Oxford American Dictionary in 2005. Its 2006 edition would start to carry and define the term.

February 2006

The first live podcast on a theatrical event occurred at the Rose Theater, West Lancashire in England.

March 2006

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper became the first head of state to issue a podcast.

October 2006

The first Podcast Peer Award was staged and its winners announced.