As any podcaster knows, the barriers to entry for starting a podcast are very low.

As I often like to describe it, all you need to get going are five things:

1. A computer
2. A microphone
3. Free recording and editing software
4. Somewhere to store and share the audio files
5. Some imagination

That will get you started.

As you get going, you may want to add to your capabilities by, for instance, buying a portable digital audio recorder like the Microtrack 24/96 that I have, or any of the many other such devices on the market.

This gives you the ability to record from anywhere at any time, in a more easier manner than lugging a computer around.

I know a few people who use an iPod as a means to record audio with a microphone adapter such as the Griffin iTalk Pro. A bit of a hybrid approach, it seems to me, and not one I’d do myself, but it clearly works for some.

If you really want to use an iPod as your primary device for recording, this may be of great interest to you – the Belkin Podcast Studio, announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.

There’s no information from Belkin yet about this iPod add-on device so all you have to go on for now are reports in online media like Wired and Engadget.

As you can see from the image, the device is a host for your iPod which records the audio (in uncompressed WAV format, great for quality). Once you sync the file with iTunes to your computer, you can then edit the file in your favourite audio editing application and save it in MP3 format (the undisputed standard format for podcasting) for a smaller file size.

Certainly portable and doing more or less the same as you’d do with a device like the Microtrack although with perhaps a bit more style. The Microtrack offers one big advantage – you can record in MP3 format as well as WAV. And by the way, a new Microtrack II was launched last November.

According to Wired, the Belkin Podcast Studio will work with the 5G (video) iPod, the iPod Classic, and the 3G iPod Nano.

What might make this a really compelling combination would be if it worked with the iPod Touch. Not for the Touch’s very cool user interface but for its wifi capability.

Imagine – you’re out there with a portable audio recording device. Record, save, immediately upload or publish from wherever you happen to be, albeit in WAV format. And no computer needed.

Belkin’s offering is planned for release in June at a keen price in the US of $100. I wonder what might happen re wifi capabilities between now and then. And file formats. And, of course, the price.