Shhhh, don't say the p-word!

Using the term "podcast" is a big faux-pas in Redmond, according to a recent Seattle Post-Intelligencer story.

Podcasting is all the rage among the Internet-savvy. It involves downloading audio programs from the Web and listening to them on a computer or portable digital music player like Apple's iPod, whose popularity helped give rise to the trend.

But the folks at Microsoft, which developed a digital music format that competes with Apple's, apparently bristle at the term. Employees for the company have taken to using the word "blogcast," instead.

"That slightly awkward name, apparently derived from the words weblog and broadcast, is being used by several Microsoft employees to offer their own audio programs over the Internet," the PI reports.

It may turn out that podcasting is nothing compared another Apple-related phenomenon sweeping the industry: iPod-envy.