Dave Beisel has a post on the future of podcasting.  It looks like he and I share the same questions. He calls for a unification of concepts and comments:

In some respects, it doesn’t matter what we call syndicated rich-media content to devices – it is what it is.  On
the other hand, it makes sense for there to be a general consensus
around the term podcast, so everyone is speaking the same language.
And I believe it’s just as important for the digerati to have the same
common notion of it as my grandmother does, as this clarification and
consensus will help further promote this new medium, whatever you call
it.

While I am very interested in the phenomenon, I don’t like the term and I suspect it may dissolve into a broader category.  As Dave says, it is just a form of content pushed to consumers.  In a way, a digital radio program is a podcast…

The differentiation between the forms and formats of content, and the analysis of each format as if a different phenomenon is counterproductive.  How is audio (podcasting) different from video (videocasting) content distribution.  The strategies surrounding both are very very similar.  If I read this blog post outloud and record it with a microphone and a digital video recorder, then distribute it as a blog entry, a podcast, and a videocast, is there really much difference in how one would approach each format?  I don’t really think so.

Podcasts, videocasts, blogs are all microchunks of content.  They should all be treated and analyzed in that context.