Merseyside

Merseyside is a metropolitan county in North West England, with a population of 1,365,900. Taking its name from the River Mersey, the title "Merseyside" came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974, after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972, and the county consists of five metropolitan boroughs adjoining the Mersey estuary, including the City of Liverpool.

Merseyside County Council was abolished in 1986, and so its districts (the metropolitan boroughs) are now effectively unitary authorities. However, the metropolitan county continues to exist in law and as a geographic frame of reference.^[1][2][3]

Merseyside is divided into two parts by the Mersey estuary: the Wirral is located on the west side of the estuary upon the Wirral Peninsula; the rest of the county is located on the east side. The northern part of Merseyside borders onto Lancashire to the north, Greater Manchester to the east, both parts border Cheshire to the south.

The territory comprising the county of Merseyside previously formed the county boroughs of Birkenhead, Wallasey, Liverpool, Bootle, and St Helens and part of the administrative counties of Lancashire (north of the River Mersey) and Cheshire (south of the River Mersey).

Manchester

Manchester (pronunciation (help·info); IPA ˈmæntʃɛstə(r)) is a city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. The City of Manchester metropolitan borough, which has city status, has a population of 452,000.^[1] Manchester lies at the centre of the wider Greater Manchester Urban Area which has a population of 2,240,230,^[2] the United Kingdom's third largest conurbation. It is also the second largest urban zone in the UK and the fourteenth most populated in Europe.

Forming part of the English Core Cities Group, and often described as the "Capital of the North",^[3] Manchester today is a centre of the arts, the media, higher education and commerce. In a poll of British business leaders published in 2006, Manchester was regarded as the best place in the UK to locate a business.^[4] A report commissioned by Manchester Partnership, published in 2007, showed Manchester to be the "fastest-growing city" economically.^[5] It is the third most visited city in the United Kingdom by foreign visitors^[6] and is now often considered to be the second city of the UK.^[7] Manchester was the host of the 2002 Commonwealth Games, and among its other sporting connections are its two Premier League football teams, Manchester United and Manchester City.^[8]

Historically, most of the city was a part of Lancashire, with areas south of the River Mersey being from Cheshire. Manchester was the world's first industrialised city^[9] and played a central role during the Industrial Revolution. It was the dominant international centre of textile manufacture and cotton spinning.^[10] During the 19th century it acquired the nickname Cottonopolis,^[10] suggesting it was a metropolis of cotton mills. Manchester City Centre is now on a tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, mainly due to the network of canals and mills constructed during its 19th-centu

podcast

A podcast is a collection of digital media files which is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers. The term, like "radio", can refer either to the content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also termed podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.

The term "podcast" is a portmanteau of the words "iPod" and "broadcast",^[1] the Apple iPod being the brand of portable media player for which the first podcasting scripts were developed (see history of podcasting). These scripts allow podcasts to be automatically transferred to a mobile device after they are downloaded.^[2]

Though podcasters' web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their content, a podcast is distinguished from other digital media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added, using an aggregator or feed reader capable of reading feed formats such as RSS or Atom.