It’s a bit difficult to categorize Mediafly in a nice little box, but here goes:   Mediafly provides a free service to manage personalized digital audio and video content.  What is interesting is that Mediafly’s service is is device-agnostic.   You can use Mediafly on an iPhone/iPod, Chumby, Zune, RSS Reader, or a host of other devices — which makes their offering unique for anyone who wants to access an audio or video podcast through a variety of consumer products.

After speaking with the company’s CEO, Carson Conant, to find out what makes Mediafly different from all the other content providers out today, it is safe to say that this company’s vision is to bring personalized media to all of your audio/video devices.

Right now Mediafly supports a host of devices including the aforementioned iPhone/iPod lineup, Chumby, Zune, Sansa, Creative Zen, Logitech Squeezebox, Castgrabber, RSS readers, and Popcorn Hour.  Expect many more devices to be supported, as Mediafly has entered into agreements with multiple smartphone manufacturers to integrate their service into additional phones by year’s end, including RIM’s BlackBerry device lineup.   Mediafly won’t be stopping with mobile phones, though.  In 2010, they are expecting to make their content accessible through a wide variety of home audio/video equipment.

How does it work?

Once you sign up for a free account, Mediafly’s SyncClient allows you to select which devices you use to view/listen to various Podcasts.  There’s no need to manually drop-and-drag files to a device or microSD card. All of the content downloads in the background, and is organized into channel playlists for easy access.   Since Mediafly works with iTunes, you do not have to alter how you use your iPod/iPhone to use the service.  In fact, the Mediafly application is readily available in the iTunes App Store (the audio version is free, and the audio+video version is merely $0.99).

Content channels are categorized by News, Sports, Comedy, and Pop Culture.  Mediafly is continually adding stations, so the selection continues to grow.   As you use Mediafly, the service will customize and recommend additional content based on your history of preferences.  A few screenshots of the current Mediafly application running on my iPhone are shown below:

Once I created a free user account on Mediafly’s homepage and selected what type of content I wanted to access, I simply downloaded the Mediafly application from the iTunes App Store and all of the channels synced up wirelessly.

A video podcast from C-net was automatically synced up and ready for me to view through Mediafly’s application.

Carson Conant, CEO of Mediafly, informed me that there is a brand new Beta for the iPhone/iPod Touch application, so expect a full review of that app to be posted on Gear Diary very soon.

Final Thoughts & Impressions

While Mediafly’s primary content is currently limited to audio and video podcasts, they plan to implement additional services for On-Demand video as well as content sharing between family, friends, and social networks.

What’s exciting about Mediafly’s approach is that you or your family will be able to utilize the service and content at no charge, through multiple devices.  Prefer using your iPhone?  No problem.  Mediafly plays nice with iTunes.  Do you or another member of the family use a separate MP3 player like the Creative Zen or Microsoft Zune?   Your Mediafly content will be available on those devices as well.

Want to catch up on the video offerings on your Television?  Mediafly will be supporting that, too — and what makes it even better is that you won’t have to buy yet another proprietary set-top box for this service, since it will be integrated directly with the device manufacturers.  View on your TV, then access that same content through your mobile phone.

There are plenty of other companies who provide content services for a specific device or platform; what makes Mediafly different is that they are providing a solution that will work with a growing number of mobile and home entertainment equipment manufacturers.

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