Liang Shubin, who blogs under the name of shubinde, is the head of Bokee's multimedia center. He writes about podcasting in this week's BQ. Translated below are excerpts from his article; the untranslated portions include basic podcasting information - iPods, RSS, iTunes - quotes from Business Week, and references to Britney's baby and Arnold's weekly address (with pictures!).

While the translation of "podcasting" into Chinese given here is clever and appropriate, it remains to be seen whether it gets adopted throughout the online community, especially given the pitched battle over the translation of "blog."

Audible performance art: Podcasting

If several years ago, becoming a moderator on your favorite BBS was an accomplishment you could file away in your recordbook, then in the past two years writing a blog has become something everyone wants to have done. Everyone keeps asking "Do you have a blog?" "Can I visit your blog?" If you reply, "What's a blog," then those eyes waiting for an answer will be filled with disappointment.

But even harder to take than eyes full of disappointment are those full of hurt. When I had been writing my blog for 8 months, around April of this year, I encountered that hurt. A friend who had always considered me at the leading edge of the Internet asked me amicably, "Do you know about podcasting?" My answer left him hurt, so I gritted my teeth for a podcasting cram session in order to become one of those first podcasters.

The soul of blogging increases the more you share it, and it's the same with podcasting. Here let me share podcasting with all of you who possess the desire to broadcast. Just like "Blog" was translated into bókè (博客), "podcasting" was translated by those brave early adopters as bōkè (播客) [where bō here means "broadcast" as well as being a play off the bó in "blog", which is purely phonetic].

What's the difference between a podcast and traditional broadcasting? Traditional broadcasting requires professionals, uses professional equipment, records professional programs, and broadcasts using professional methods at a time set by a professionally prepared schedule, and only then reaches our ears. For a podcast, with only your computer, a microphone, and an idea, you're set! Since they both have the "broadcasting" element in their names, it's clear they need some sort of channel for transmission so that people will hear it and you're not just talking to amuse yourself. Podcasting uses the Internet and RSS technology from the Internet 2.0 to realize a system in which I can subscribe to programs and listen to whatever I want right when I want it. The limitations of traditional broadcasting - they can only offer 24 hours of programming, and their listening model is completely passive - have been surpassed by podcasting. Traditional broadcasting's inflexible framework can be released.

Right now there is a blogger born every second. What about podcasters? Even if it's one per minute, that's still quite a force. American media estimates that by 2010, the US will have 60 million podcasters. China will have 6 million, but this is a conservative estimate, since the artistic style of the Chinese language is a natural match for podcasting.

I've been a podcaster for four months now. Many of my friends subscribe to my podcasting programs, including classmates of mine off abroad. And after they've shared my podcasts, they too have joined the ranks of podcasters. At weekend get-togethers I'll hook my iPod up to my friends' speakers, and like a great hero, I'll enjoy the free atmosphere of podcasting while sharing what I've learned. Everyone who's heard it has felt that they, too, could become a podcaster. All they need is to act.