Online Apps Help You Get The Most Out Of March Madness

March Madness is in full swing as the nation’s best college hoops teams face off in this year’s NCAA Basketball tournament, and there is no shortage of online applications looking to help you keep tabs on your favorite teams.

CBS has built an iPhone application that allows users to stream live video of any NCAA basketball game, provided they are on a Wi-Fi network (you can only listen to an audio feed if you are on 3G or Edge). The requirement for Wi-Fi obviously isn’t ideal and you’ll still have to watch commercials, but for $5 the application is certainly worth it if you’re an avid basketball fan. If you’re on a PC, you can also stream games free of charge from the official NCAA site.

Another option for getting basketball news delivered to your phone is Buzzwire, which specializes in mobile content. By visiting m.buzzwire.com from your mobile phone and selecting ‘March Madness’, users can view a list of relevant news articles pulled from a variety of sources, including ESPN, CBS Sports, and Sports Illustrated.

If you’re not content to just follow the news and want to make sure your friends know as well, a service called Final Four 09 will automatically tweet scores and news updates from your Twitter account (after you enter your credentials). The system is fairly easy to use – just check off the teams you’d like to broadcast about. But don’t check off too many teams or your followers are likely to get sick of your constant tweeting. As an incentive to help the app go viral, you can earn points for having your Twitter followers join the service (at the end of the tournament the user with the most points wins a Flip Mino HD camcorder).