With last week’s iPad announcement, Apple hopes to start a technology revolution. Again. They nudged the smartphone market into the future with the release of the iPhone. Just a couple of years later, many of the over 140,000 iPhone applications available for download or purchase have pushed mobile development to new heights.

Now developers have a new platform to test their experiments. But while the iPhone ushered in a wave of applications geared around portability and location, the iPad will likely drive developers to create completely new user experiences.

The iPad offers developers a blank 9.7-inch canvas on which they can develop any interface they choose – with the added benefit of multi-touch, positioning sensors, and more. While tablets are not a new concept, they’ve always been built atop the recognized interface and conventions of a traditional computer. Users expect a certain experience with these sorts of applications; if it doesn’t feel familiar, there’s often resistance.

On a new form factor like the iPad, the resistance to change almost completely disappears. The iPad is a new experience from the start and lacks the complex interface of normal computers, allowing developers to spend less time focusing on what people expect and more time focusing on what is natural.

Developers around the world have a new, intuitive interface for applications. Expect to see some true innovation for the iPad over the next few months.

On every summer trip I take to Boston, I always try to make some time to walk around Quincy Market. On a clear day several street performers will be stationed at various spots around the historic market demonstrating a talent or performing some sort of act. Some attract a few tourists as they walk past. The seasoned performers can build a crowd of hundreds within a few minutes.

I’ve been thinking a lot about these street performers lately and how an online crowd can build just as quickly. Like the audiences gathering outside Quincy Market, these online crowds often share an interest or purpose. Most of the people in the crowd have never met – and most will never see each other again.

This morning, one such crowd of people across the globe formed around a common event: a temporary glitch in Google’s search results pages. Hundreds of Twitter users reported their experience in an effort to determine the scope of the problem.

And while it’s widely known that famous Twitterers can garner follower crowds of thousands on the microblogging site, there was no better example of the speed of crowd formation than when Soleil Moon Frye, an actress best known for the title role in the TV series Punky Brewster, began to tweet. Within 24 hours of her first tweet, more than 3,000 people were following her account.

Twitter may be considered an for digital street performers. As we continue to see, online crowds hold much more power to engage with those stationed outside the online Quincy Market.

Photo by Ecnerwal.

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?

I spent a good portion of the afternoon on Thursday listening to two of the season’s biggest tech presentations: the introduction of the iPhone SDK by Steve Jobs and company and Guy Kawasaki’s interview of Steve Ballmer. I noticed something interesting while listening: both companies realize that they have to change.

Help from Microsoft and developers

If there was any doubt that Apple wants as much market share as possible for the iPhone, Phil Schiller put them to rest as he ran through the features of iPhone Exchange support. As an attempt to break into the (often slow-moving) mobile corporate world, Apple plans to add an impressive new feature set geared towards corporate users in their June iPhone 2.0 software update.

The biggest tweak of Apple’s longtime philosophy came as a result of the upcoming iPhone SDK. Following the technical introduction of the new development platform, Steve Jobs extended an open-arms invitation to third-party developers by way of Apple’s new App Store. Apple’s use of a simplified software repository available to all seems to signal their confidence in developers to really use the iPhone’s technology in new and creative ways. The service isn’t free, though; in a move that is likely to generate as much discussion as the lack of an optical drive in the MacBook Air, Apple retains 30% of the revenue from any sales through the App Store and offers no other option for developers to have apps delivered to the device.

Did somebody say “innovation”?

“Innovation” would’ve been a good word for a drinking game during Guy Kawasaki’s interview of Steve Ballmer.

The interview between Guy and Steve was littered with reminders that Microsoft is now a player in a lot of markets with fierce competition, both on the offensive and defensive fronts. Their buyout attempt at Yahoo and their new focus on Flash competitor Silverlight show their intense interest in the Web. All the usual suspects were mentioned: Apple, Google, Firefox, Linux… would competitors’ names come up in a presentation during Microsoft’s heyday?

Ballmer’s position on many of their key market focuses seemed to concede that they have to change the way they do business, and they’re in a great position to be an even larger force in many tech markets with a few simple changes. Their success may be largely driven by openness, something that never would have been used as a descriptor for the company until recently.

Openness, in fact, seems to be an increasing force on both Apple and Microsoft, two companies known historically for tight control over their environments. Their moves toward open access may result in the success (or failure) of their latest ventures into new markets.