Paris Hilton has had some ill-fated encounters with technology as evidenced by her T-Mobile Sidekick and digital video incidents, but she's still keen to try the latest thing. The multimedia starlet has agreed to podcast about her social and press events in the buildup to the May 6 release of her upcoming feature film, "House of Wax."

Warner Bros. also will offer a podcast series for "Superman Returns," directly from the set in Australia, starting next month.

Podcasting is sort of like TiVo for Internet audio programs. Users enter their choices into special software called podcatchers, which collect and make the programs available for playback at a later time, either on the computer or more typically an iPod or other portable device.

For "The Paris Hilton Podcast -- Countdown to House of Wax," which begins April 29, Hilton will relate tales about her adventures in shopping, partying, posing and publicizing the upcoming horror movie.

The studio also is offering what Warner Bros. senior vp interactive marketing Don Buckley called the first custom movie client software, called the House of Wax Podcatcher (available for free PC and Mac download at www.houseofwaxmovie.com). Any podcatcher will work, but the official movie one comes preprogramd to record Hilton's podcast.

"We are doing this because it is a unique opportunity to reach our target audience, obviously," Buckley said. "The MP3 player market is on its way to 100 million players, and they are primarily in the hands of 18- to 34-year-olds. The irresistible celebrity of Paris Hilton and Joel Silver's 'House of Wax' together seemed an ideal combination."

Although this is the first actor to do a podcast relevant to a feature film, entertainment companies are noticing the industry's growing endorsement of the new technology. Other official podcasts include the weekly "Battle¬star Gallactica" commentary by the Sci Fi Channel hit's executive producer Donald B. Moore, for instance.

Many radio stations are making selected programs available via podcast as well, a wide-ranging list that includes NPR's "On the Media," KFI's "Laporte's Radio Show," WXTM Cleveland's "Metal Show" and Air America's "Al Franken Show."

"The BBC, NPR and a few major corporations are starting to look at podcasting," Buckley said. "New companies are forming to aggregate, like networks, all sorts of programming that the listener can access when and where they want. So we are taking it very seriously. There will be sponsorship as well as programming opportunities, and we are looking at all of that."

These and thousands of other podcasts can be found most easily using such directories as new media and broadcasting veteran Adam Curry's ipodder.org. Buckley said his own podcast subscriptions include the Dawn and Drew Show (www.dawnanddrew.com) and Curry's own Daily Source Code (www.dailysourcecode.com).

"House of Wax" is produced by Silver, Robert Zemeckis and Susan Levin and directed by Jaume Collet-Serra for Dark Castle Entertainment. It will be released by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Co., and in select territories by Village Roadshow Pictures.