> *Author: *Joe Wrigley
> *Date: *2011-02-22 11:12 -000
> **
> />I would like them
> > to be treated as podcast files, so that I can listen to them in 
> sections.
> /
> A quick and easy option could just be wordpress on your local system:
>
> http://codex.wordpress.org/Podcasting
>
> Otherwise, you could try:
>
> http://easypodcast.sourceforge.net/
>
> N.B. I've not tried either, but I would lean towards the wordpress 
> option. 
Easypodcast is a GUI, and I don't do GUIs if I can help it!  I tried the 
wordpress path, but after installing the 10th package, and trying to 
remember the third password, it was all too much.
I eventually found a page[1] which told me that a podcast server is 
essentially a single XML file hosted on a web server, and described how 
to create that XML podcast feed file.  I just set that file up as a 
couple of templates (one for the header section, and one for the text 
describing an individual podcast file as an "item" in the XML), and 
wrote a shell script to write out the header section (with the current 
date in it as the "publish" date), followed by as many <item> entries as 
I had MP3 files, using "stat" and "mp3info" to extract the required info 
from them.  That XML file goes into the root of my apache2 
installation.  I then went to the machine running iTunes and browsed to 
that page; it even gave me a simple button to subscribe.  Now I can run 
the XML file creation script whenever I want to publish the latest mp3s, 
and iTunes will automatically pick them up.
[1] 
http://www.podcast411.com/howto_1.html