There’s been quite a bit of discussion over Apple’s decision to ban iPhone SDK applications from running in the background.  I found a link to a great argument by Hank Williams in favor of background processes on a post (“The Flip Side of the Multitasking Argument“) over at John Gruber’s Daring Fireball.  In it, Williams mentions that “with location aware devices we can broadcast not just ‘presence’ but location.”

With a device so personal, would you want to allow background applications to broadcast your exact location or status? For me that’s an action I would want to explicitly allow, and that permission would most likely come in the form of actively running the application in the foreground.

I realize the argument may venture be on the borderline of Orwellian paranoia, but there are new considerations that have to be made for such smart mobile devices.

A report on Marketplace this morning actually managed to anger me. The show featured a short conversation with Bill Werde of Billboard Magazine about the recent release of Ghosts by Nine Inch Nails.

What Trent and NIN are doing is the future of music, and it’s definitely newsworthy. Unfortunately, the name of the report (“Trent Reznor pulls a Radiohead”) foreshadowed its many flaws:

1. Nine Inch Nails was giving away music long before Radiohead’s In Rainbows was released for free. In fact, NIN released a couple noteworthy radio hits under a liberal license perfect for remixers. Werde’s comments sounded as if the band was only releasing the tracks due to the success of Radiohead’s attempt.
2. Werde argues that only “bands that frankly major labels have already made big brands” profit from freely releasing music. I believe artists like Jonathan Coulton might disagree. (Notably, it may be true that bands with more tech-savvy fanbases may profit more from this tactic, but I haven’t made up my mind about that.)
3. It’s “Nine Inch Nails”, not “Nine Inch Nail’s”.

It’s great that these sorts of movements are getting mainstream publicity. I just wish they’d get the facts straight.

An audio version of the conversation is also available on the site.

Today was a big day for search.

In the early days of the Web, finding information was accomplished through human-edited directories (the most popular of which was Yahoo).  Despite the increasing complexity of sites and services available on the Web, search results have remained essentially the same since the switch to crawler-based search in the late 1990s.  Results have actually grown more standardized over the last decade; the ubiquitous search results page now features the familiar blue, gray, green color scheme we’ve seen for quite a few years.

Yahoo wants to change that.  Today the search company began to detail its new search platform, complete with microformat support and an overall attempt to jump-start the embrace of Sir Tim’s vision of a semantic Web.

Attempts at more useful results

Semantic results are the natural evolution of search.  Instead of providing a plain title/description/URL listing for pages in a result list, Yahoo hopes to open up the structure to allow site owners to have a bit of customization of how their results appear.

Experiments with results reformatting have been taking place for a while.  Google’s Sitelinks – extra links to navigation points within a site that appear below a site’s main listing – now appear frequently in results pages, and searches for local services lead off with a map-based view of business listings.  Google’s Experimental Search area has offered map, timeline, and info views for results since May of last year, but it has unfortunately stayed buried within the depths of Google Labs.

Yahoo wants to put semantic search front and center.  As Yahoo mentions in their announcement, more relevant search results benefit the search engine, the content creator, and the searcher.

Control may be the difference

Although Google has experimented with contextual views, Yahoo’s announcement takes a somewhat risky yet possibly rewarding extra step: webmaster control of results.  The Yahoo announcement gives a visual example of a LinkedIn result that features action links, network stats, and profile information.  An earlier Yelp result mockup included location and rating information of a Japanese restaurant.

It’s wonderful to see that Yahoo is pushing forward with semantic results by supporting open microformats and service-specific search results.  The icing on the cake will be the control given to webmasters to improve the usefulness of their sites’ results.

For the first time in years, we’re on the brink of a revolution in the world of online search.

While reading through my Twitterstream this afternoon, I noticed an @leolaporte invasion.  Leo had asked a question:

Getting ready to speak to radio executives at the Radio Ink conference. Q: Is radio dead? Discuss! 

Since my friends on Twitter share my love of the Laporte, I was treated to a constant barrage of replies.

In its fairly short life, Twitter has moved from not much more than a public view of status messages to a close-knit way to read and reply to whatever happens to be taking up space in the minds of your friends.  Leo’s afternoon query – and thousands of others from people all around the world – signal another space for everyone’s favorite 140-character addiction: a real-time polling service.

Advantage: popularity

The polling advantage is held by those with a huge following.  While a user with a double-digit following may receive one or two responses a Twitter question, Leo (with over 9,000 followers) will naturally receive more.

Where does that leave users with a humbler following?  In general Twitter users enjoy making connections and helping others.  The missing link is a centralized place for people to ask (and answer) questions in the Twitterverse.

A possible solution

Twitter services such as @commuter have become an innovative way to extend the possibilities of microblogging.  Could a centralized question and answer service be the answer for Twitter users who want to ask and answer questions?

Consider the following scenario.

1. A Twitter user sends a direct message (DM) to a question service/bot.
2. The service tweets the user’s question with the user’s name at the beginning of the tweet.
3. Other users reply to the question asker with their answer.

A very similar service already exists; @QNA takes a more reference-based approach.  The social component of Twitter seems to be missing, though.  Any sort of conversational question could be useful: What should I watch on TV right now? Anyone know how to change roles in WordPress? Where should I go for the best cheese steaks in Philly?

The biggest challenge of such a service would be convincing enough users to adopt it.

In his wonderful “Social Media & Networking Starter Guide” presentation at PodCamp Toronto, Chris Brogan (another member of the Twitter four-digit follower club) explained how his connections on Twitter helped him find his destination while he was lost in Manhattan.   How long will it take before any Twitter user can have that sort of convenience?