I have always been interested in forum/discussion software, and held the opinion that Usenet-style newsgroup is as good as they get. I didn’t like web-based forums for their relatively low usability and interactiveness, as for these it is hard to beat good native clients such as Xnews or Thunderbird.
Russell Beattie is an expert in mobile devices, but I find him sometimes so far ahead of (and way off) the curve that whenever he gets excited about something in his own domain of expertise, e.g. smartphones and rented music, it is better to just look the other way.
However, this time his idea of tagged forum as implemented by Anthony Eden is most interesting and very promising. Instead of dividing discussions into their own groups, discussions are organized by their meta-tags. Check out a test post.
Let’s wait to see whether (i) meta-tagging is truly scaleable, and (ii) the (l)users are any good with giving meta-tags.
Update (11/2 0802 hours): Overnight Tagsurf has gained “threading”, and it works rather well. This is a classic example of the quick evolution of web applications.