Since I've been involved with podcasting, I now understand what's been going on. Because of the ease of communication in that blog network and the fact that Dave Wiener and Dave Slusher and Adam Curry had all been people who had established blogs, they were in that circle of communication. Those were where the first podcasts came from, because it was just one more way to take advantage of something they were already using with RSS, and now they could just add an audio file component to that.

For me, the entire reason to get involved was the audio. But as with anything, the audio has some production value and time behind it. You can't sit down in three minutes and do a podcast. You can sit down in three minutes and say, "I just read this great article over here on this guy's blog," or "Hey, I just got back from seeing this movie - it's good." You can convey quick information.

So I think they work well together, and in my case I use my website as the home for the audio files. And I also use it as a way to communicate with the people who are listening and paying attention to what I'm doing, as well as give everybody a little bit of an intro to the audio. So if I do a 15-minute Reel Review on a particular film, I'll type up four or five sentences just to give you an idea of what it is I'm going to talk about [on that podcast]. So for someone cruising by the site one day, I might attract their interest.

EB: It seems that blogs can work as kind of an outpost to encourage interactivity.

MG: Sure, and obviously the blog component allows for another way for two-way communication to take place. If I put up a review, then generally very quickly after that they'll be a number of comments about what other people thought of the film. It's one more convenient way for people to get back to me. I also get a lot of audio comments on an audio-comment line that I have. So for me, I'm happy with any way that we can communicate.

EB: I'm sure you get asked this question a lot, but what's your advice for potential podcasters out there?