There are three steps involved in setting up your personal computer to receive podcasts.

You need to install a piece of software which will search the web to find the latest episode and automatically deliver it to your computer.

This software is usually free, and these three are popular with City of Mesquite users:

• iTunes
• Juice
• Doppler

List of podcast software on podcastingnews.com

(always read the set-up and help guides for new software)

The City of Mesquite is not responsible for the content of external websites

Once you have the software installed you need to subscribe to some podcasts.

How you do this will vary depending on which software you have chosen. Here is a rough guide to how this might work:

If you have iTunes

You can subscribe to some podcasts through the iTunes Podcast Directory.

If you can't find the podcast that you want in iTunes then you can follow the same method as outlined below for Juice, Doppler and other podcast software.

If you have Juice, Doppler or other podcast software

If you have Juice, Doppler or another piece of software then this is likely to be the method you will need to follow. This is also the case if you can't find the podcast you want in iTunes.

In all of these cases you need to add the "feed" of the podcast to your software. The feed is really just the address of the podcast, which the software will go to each time it wants to check for a new episode.

You can find the feed for any Mesquite Police podcast by clicking on either the orange XML button, or the yellow Podcast button. In both cases the feed address will appear in the address bar of your internet browser. It will start with http://www.cityofmesquite.com/police_web/podcasts/...

You will need to copy this feed address and paste it into your podcast software. How you do this will depend on your software, but you should look out for buttons or links that say "Add" or "Subscribe".

When a new episode becomes available for the podcast you have subscribed to, your software will automatically download it. You can then listen to this episode on your pc or transfer it to your portable player to listen to later.

You may want to check the settings of your podcast software for details including how often it will check for new episodes, whether it will keep old episodes for you etc. This will vary depending on the software you have chosen, and your personal preferences.

If you decide that you no longer want to receive podcast episodes then it should be very easy to unsubscribe. Again, how you do this will depend on your software, but you should look for "Clear" or "Unsubscribe" options.