Making a podcast is relatively simple and can be carried out easily with some cheap basic equipment:

What hardware and software do I need?

Hardware

Computer	Microphone or Headset	MP3 or MP4 Player

Software

This depends on how you intend to record the podcast. You could just get away with recording straight onto an MP3 player or I-pod (if it has a built in voice recorder), but you would probably still want to put it on a computer to edit it or add some sound effects such as music that signals that podcast is starting/ending.

When recording onto a computer, it is best to use a headset which has a microphone attached, as this can be placed nearer to the mouth and cuts out a lot of background noise.

In order to edit the recording, you will need some audio editing software. At a very basic level you could record sound files using Windows Sound recorder. This is normally found on all computers running Windows: Start|Programs|Acessories|Entertainment|Sound Recorder but it has limited functionality and the audio files it creates can often be large.

It is much better to use Open Source software such as Audacity for recording and editing, this can be downloaded free from the Internet.

Hosting

Once you have made a podcast, you can upload it to your own website or have it hosted on one of a number of sites some of which can be found in the links section of this pack. Others can be found by doing a quick search on Google.