The Oxford American Dictionary has declared podcast word of the year. Podcast is defined as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the internet for downloading to a personal audio player."

It will be added to the online version of the Oxford American Dictionary next year when it is updated.

Podcast was originally used by journalist Ben Hammersly and is a combination of the words ipod and broadcasting. For this very reason it has been criticised, given that ipods are not the only devices that people can listen to podcasts on.

In fact it has been suggested that Apple "had little to do with the development of the technology" and this new term gives the company "too much credit".

Alternative terms such as blogcasting or audioblogging have been proposed.

Anyone with a microphone, an internet connection and the necessary software can create a podcast and they have thus become extremely popular and have begun to threaten traditional media providers. (see previous posting)

Source: BBC News