Online content - the apple factor

Well, I'm a few days in to having no (cable) television and I'm absolutely loving it!

It's amazing how much content is available online. Basically the only reason I had cable television was to watch Fast Money and Mad Money on CNBC. But to my surprise, both shows are fully available on CNBC's web site. It's amazing how quickly the content is put online - I think it might be almost real-time - but definitely within a few hours of broadcast.

So what's the new paradigm that I'm experiencing?

I have a little CNBC app on my iPod and with a simple click I can watch both Fast Money and Mad Money on my iPod. The video quality is excellent and there's absolutely no lag or buffering as the video plays. I can choose which segments of the show I want to watch (allowing me to skip segments on say Gold, which I tend not to care about listening to).

If I want Canadian news, the National (and most CBC shows) are available online also on CBC's Web site.

I can definitely see the huge value in tablets now.... they are basically mini portable television screens (among other things).

The more I 'live on the net' the more it becomes crystal clear that the internet will be the future for all content and information and entertainment exchange. We're truly there now... you can live on the net and still be 'plugged in' to everything going on in the world.

Which also got me thinking. In much the same way that RSS feeds aggregate online text-based content, if someone came out with an application or browser plug-in that aggregated online video content from other sites they could make a killing.

I'd love to have a central browser where I could add all my fav sites that I get video content from in a simple interface. In a way 'bookmarks' kind of do this, but I still have to visit the sites to see what's new. Something that aggregated content into a single interface and updated you on new video content available on various sites would be awesome.

From a PR perspective I'm going to go in search of the best apps for monitoring the online world, because it's going to become ever more important to be able to do so quickly and simply. Google news alerts are fantastic and pick up almost every mention of an organization, but you still want that ability of knowing what is being said in general across hundreds of media sites (without having to click on hundreds of bookmarks every day).

Will update when I finish my search.

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