The capabilities of the iPhone 3Gs aka the iPhone Video should serve as a serious wake-up call to media (including podcast) hosting companies. We finally have a device that can capture good quality audio and video content, allow the user to edit the content, then upload that content to the web at decent speeds using either wifi or the 3G cell network. We've been waiting for this for years. As a result I've never been more hopeful about the prospects of truly mobile media publishing where I can create my content on the street then have it up on my website minutes later.

As it stands now you can get the rich media content you capture on the iPhone 3Gs to the web. Videos can be automatically uploaded to YouTube. Audio captured on the device can be uploaded to services such as AudioBoo. Services like these offer the benefit of easy integration with the iPhone plus format conversion, flash players and RSS feeds. Serious content producers will want to go one step further than just uploading their media to a 3rd party service. They'll want to upload the media, get the value added features I just mentioned and have the end result published on their own website, with their own RSS feed url that also connects to an iTunes podcast directory listing. The same serious media producers will also probably want to have the original media file downloadable from the web which is something that iTunes and AudioBoo don't offer.

The traditional role of the media host in recent years has been to provide a storage space accessible via FTP, permanent download link and some analytics. Libsyn was one of the first companies that changed the normal way of doing business in the space by offering media hosting connected to website publishing and iTunes compatible RSS feeds. Podcasting was born! Unfortunately the Libsyn web publishing interface did not progress much and most people I know still use them just for file storage and statistics. Services like WordPress.com have tackled the media publishing problem by starting with a rich web publishing tool while adding audio and video hosting as an add on.

Both WordPress.com and LibSyn have their shortcomings as tools for publishing rich media. LibSyn has the iTunes support and good statistics. WordPress.com has the nice web presence covered and flash video encoding. Both fall very short when it comes to mobile media publishing via the iPhone.

There's a large gap in the media hosting space that doesn't address the needs of mobile power users. An FTP interface should be a standard basic feature but there should be other options as well. Integration with the iPhone should be mandatory. Cross publishing, at the very least, a title, description and the file download link to the blog of my choice should be another. Conversion of video to the web friendly flash format should be offered as well. There's a need for integrated flash audio players too. And of course I should have analytics that provide all the details on how my media is being consumed. There are plenty of services that offer one or more of the pieces of the puzzle but none offers all of them.

Here's my explicit vision so there's no confusion. I shoot a video (or record audio) on the iPhone. I do whatever I need to do editing wise then add a title, description, then upload all of it to my next generation media hosting service. The service then publishes the title, description, direct download link and flash player to the blog of my choice. The blog handles the RSS feed. So now I've published content in a completely mobile fashion and the media is published on my branded website without my audience having to get involved with a 3rd party website.

I think that kind of a workflow adds real value to publishers who want to really go mobile. I don't know for sure but I think that there are a lot of them. I'm one of them. So I'll be waiting and watching to see who steps up to serve the needs of mobile content producers who want real time, white label media publishing capabilities.