My wife and I have a difference of opinion. She feels as though baseball is the most utterly boring event on earth. I don't.

Luckily, "MLB.com At Bat" affords me the opportunity to see exactly what's happening in any Major League Baseball game. It updates every 15 seconds that I have the application open.

But where "At Bat" gets really interesting is by tapping the camera icon. Instantly, the user is taken to a list of regularly updated video highlights, which take advantage of the iPhone's YouTube video player to show about 30 seconds of the play I just missed. If I'm in Wi-Fi range, the video is crisp and lively. When I'm on the road and using one of the cellular data networks, "At Bat" detects that and quickly streams a decent, lower-bandwidth video highlight.

Stripping away the baseball and my personal need for counterbalancing reality TV and countdown shows, there are important takeaways for marketers:

Even if your video assets aren't live, the iPhone's capability to detect bandwidth and deliver stunningly crisp on-demand video is impressive. Remember, the baseball video isn't live, but as soon as it appears in my list of available videos, it has a certain immediacy and convenience no other channel has. While people are skipping your ads on DVR, your core audience may be drawn to them if you release spots to the iPhone as they're finished.

Secondly, instantly updated content is still content. Whether that's the balls and strikes or serving press releases to tech-savvy reporters or recipes to curious, affluent moms, Major League Baseball has shown all of us how quickly you can repurpose existing content into an engaging iPhone application to lock in your most loyal fans.

What's more, it shows that those loyal audience members are willing to pay $4.99 in exchange for a richer experience than what is available from your WAP site, if you already have a presence there. Of all the applications I have downloaded, this is the one I check most regularly.