[Brian]

Salem, sorry for the confusion! This is likely due to the location-based reminders feature we added recently. This forum post may help explain what's going on. If you have location reminders enabled, the icon you referred to is going to remain visible; the reminders won't work otherwise.

As previous posters mentioned, though, Apple designed the API we're using there to minimize battery drain. The toolbar icon is intended as a privacy control - they want you to know that something is monitoring your location. In previous versions of iOS, it could be used to gauge battery drain, but that was always a side effect and isn't as useful in that manner in iOS 5.

That said, if you haven't installed iOS 5.0.1, installing it may help - it was aimed at fixing a battery-draining bug in the OS. (Though some folks report that Apple has more work to do in this regard.)