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Well, you might as well ask how useful is the radio? Or the internet, or the TV, or any communication and entertainment media. The fact is, podcasting has evolved to become what radio broadcasting was in its pioneering days. And it has done so at a much faster pace with a much wider and eager audience than either TV or Radio was in their infancy. And what’s so appealing to it is that, just about anyone can be a podcaster.

Once you have the materials you want to broadcast or publish on the net, there are free software tools you can download on the net to allow you to become one. Of course, there’s a few more to it. But for sure, you don’t need any ECE or radio operator license to be a podcaster.

As starters, podcasting brings a much greater degree of freedom to its intended audience. Unlike radio broadcast, audiences can determine what subjects they want to hear about. And because it is a form of On Demand media programming, audiences can listen to a podcast downloaded to their PC or any mobile device like an iPod anytime and anywhere they want.

So what does podcasting do? It is basically radio on the internet. But a few applications have made themselves a natural target for podcasting. Here they are:

Music

This is perhaps the first application of Podcasting that had its roots with Apple’s podcast section in iTunes. After all, podcasting is said to have been derived from the iPod.

Education

Colleges, schools and universities have allowed parts of their curriculum to be aired as podcasts for students to supplement their classroom lessons. A new derivative term called “coursecast” have been coined and adopted to refer to this phenomenon. Some subjects like foreign language and speech courses lend them naturally to podcasts, benefiting students by maximize the use of their time after or in between classes.

Interviews and talk Shows

Just like music mp3 files downloaded over RSS feeds, interviews and talks with celebrities have achieved certain popularity among net users. Entertainment and political personalities talking about specific issues are available on podcasts. Even tycoons and corporate head honchos like Steve Jobs on the release of iPhone and Sony executives on the release of their new PS3 and high definition Blu-ray formats have podcast coverage in a number of forums on those subjects. The term “talkcast” is another coined derivative that have been referred to about podcasting talk shows.

Storytelling

If there are ebooks you can download to your pdf reading cellphones, short stories and novels read aloud by anonymous or famous voices can be aired online as podcasts.

Sportscast

Of course there’s no substitute to a large TV or cable broadcast of a live sporting event. And there are “videocasts” of such events over the internet as another application of podcasting.

Evangelization

Not as popular as entertainment gossip news, gospel readings and religious evangelization from pastors and ministers of various Christian born again sects also lend themselves easily to podcasts.

There are a lot more applications on podcasting, mostly deriving from the above subjects. There are tutorials on how-to subjects, medical digests, news and editorial commentaries as well as product announcements and advertorials that can have a greater audience reach with podcasts. Obviously, podcasting has just scratched the surface.