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"’People think I’m this poseur guy from MTV, but I don’t care,’ says Adam Curry, the former VJ whose long blond locks once mesmerized teenyboppers across the globe. ‘I’ve always had this total dual life as a geek and a celebrity.’

"Curry, 40, is the brains behind iPodder, a tiny application that he believes has the power to challenge commercial radio. iPodder is the bastard offspring of the blog and the Apple MP3 player. It combines the hyperactive talkiness of blogs and the hipness of iPods into something utterly new: the podcast. iPodder uses the blog syndication tool RSS to automatically download homebrew radio shows, podcasts, directly into a portable MP3 player.

"Welcome to podcasting, the medium that promises a future where anyone can make radio, instead of just listen to it. The biggest podcast audiences now number in the mere tens of thousands. Yet real radio, the kind with bona fide mass audiences, is starting to use the technology to make its shows available for download.

"The podcasting scene is reminiscent of the early, heady days of blogging, circa 2001, a time before Wonkette made the cover of The New York Times Magazine. Like bloggers in the good old days, podcasters are obsessively internecine and gloriously, honestly unprofessional."

Annalee Newitz. Adam Curry Wants to Make You an iPod Radio Star. Wired. March 2005.

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