Don't have time to catch the morning weather forecast? If you live in the United States. the National Weather Service might have a solution. Get your weather to go in a podcast.  People living in the Baltimore-Washington region can already do that. The Weather Service's Baltimore-Washington regional office in Sterling, Va., started making daily forecasts available about a year ago as a way to experiment with the technology, said Steve Listemaa, an information technology officer in the regional office.  "It's an easier way to get our information out there," he said.   

So far, only three Weather Service offices - Sterling; El Paso, Texas; and Anchorage, Alaska - make weather podcasts available, but those examples are indicative of various agencies' efforts to explore how they can adapt podcast technology to disseminate information about services or events.

USA.gov lists a range of government podcast topics here.  One of the first agencies to move into podcasting was the Defense Department. It began offering audio downloads of programs on the Pentagon Channel in spring 2005. The channel offers news and documentaries, among other programs. Since then, more than 7.1 million podcasts have been downloaded, said Michael Winnaker, a marketing coordinator for the channel.

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