• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, October 11, 2005

Trying to keep up with current trends, Yahoo! Monday launched a suite of podcasting tools to search for, arrange, and rate the multitudinous digital audio files flooding the Web. The free service, which has yet to be monetized, is intended to make it easier for consumers to sort through the tens of thousands of podcasts available online today.

The service can be found at podcasts.yahoo.com.

Unheard of until last year, podcasting is the act of uploading audio programs to the Web, following which the files can be played via personal computer or downloaded to multimedia players for listening at a later date.

Yahoo! estimates that up to five million people currently listen to podcasts, which cover every theme from computer technical support and pet grouping tips to hardcore trance music and inspirational spoken word.

Yahoo!'s service is compatible with most MP3 devices including Apple's iPod, the iRiver player, Dell's DJ, and Creative Technology Ltd.'s Zen.

While smaller Internet companies like search startup blinkx have launched similar services, Yahoo! is the first of the big four--itself, Google, MSN, and AOL--to launch any podcasting tools. At the end of June, blinkx released a service to find podcasts and video blogs.