I’ve been an offline advocate of online content distribution for close to four years and online for the past year.

Adobe has gone live with it’s new media player to go head to head with Apple’s iTunes.

I haven’t appreciated Apple’s proprietary iTunes application, and to the OS/hardware lock that the benevolent Steve Jobs convinces the consumer public into.

Adobe has taken the notion of internet content distribution and made it viable through the acquisition of Macromeda - specifically with the use of it’s Flash technology. Whether I agree with it or not, Flash is the most popular technology for delivering visual content online. It provides a means of implementing Digital Rights Management, which has its own debate. But this also provides a universally cross platform technology for content distribution - including the announced Alpha version of Adobe AIR for Linux, which is the underlying base framework for their player.

Solo Video Journalists are going to reap the rewards of Adobe’s technology by utilizing the Internet as a means of delivering their content to anyone who wants to view it. Flash is universal - it’s installed on 97%-99% of the computers accessing the Internet.

Once the technological hurdles of delivering HD content online can be overcome, video content delivery as we know it will be forever changed. In 10 years time - what we knew as television broadcasting will be looked upon as archaic and limiting.

Welcome to the future of Online Content Distribution.