Today at Yahoo’s Brickhouse, a team of developers, press, and Yahoo execs including co-founder David Filo converged for the release of Fire Eagle, Yahoo’s geo-location platform. Fire Eagle allows allows developers to include positional data in their applications with a minimal amount of work. The platform was originally announced in November, and has since been deployed by a number of select partners including Six Apart and LightPole. Today’s release extends availability to anyone.
Fire Eagle allows users to syndicate their positional data to any partner service after updating from a supported device or website. This means that after sending a Pownce message with a geo-tagged photo, I could have Fire Eagle automatically update my current location on my blog and social network profile. Users can opt to disable updates whenever they’d like, and for the especially paranoid, you can even lie about your location.
Included in the announcement were demos from partners Six Apart, Pownce, and Outside.in, each of which already features integration with Fire Eagle. Six-Apart’s Moveable Type plugin has actually been available since March, and allows users to go-tag their posts and include a frequently updated map on their blog. Pownce, which is launching Fire Eagle support today, allows users to geo-tag nearly anything on its file and message sharing service. In the future, Pownce will also allow users to browse other users’ messages by location.
One of my biggest concerns with Fire Eagle (and one that Yahoo is well aware of) is the lack of a standardized way to remove location updates from partner services. While users have full control over their current Fire Eagle status (which only includes their current position, and keeps no log), the partner services they’ve signed up for may continue to display their location history indefinitely. Fire Eagle says that as part of the Terms of Service, partner services must agree to let users delete their messages, but this will be impossible to enforce. Ultimately, it will be up to users to selectivity give their information to the services they trust.
That said, Fire Eagle’s ease of use and relativity low barrier to entry (you can use your existing Yahoo ID) stands to make it a hit for developers and users alike, especially given impending rise of proximity-based social networks and services.
Interesting but will I ever use it? I am not sure that geo-locating everything imaginable matters. I just want my wallet and keys geo-located that I lost last week LOL. I think geo-locating works best in vehicles and aircraft, work on improving that. I plan to use a proprietary geo-locating technology with my record. http://www.FliteRecord.com
fireagle geo location {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/MWXfhnF5XK_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”fireagle geo location ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/SiQnc7p2cm”}}}
i’m going to shoot myself – if i have to hear another minute of these girls talk
we heart wtf {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/8S7yulAgup_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”we heart wtf ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/BRCQX2UB8J”}}}
Scribd’s boy-CEO is so much hotter than you gals!
Maybe if your video was better quality, we all…ummm… could see… umm… what site your trying to pimp
How long before seesmic joins the deadpool?
Before then I bet we’ll see these hot girls in bikini as the next desperate move from seesmic to attract users.
Feh.
These are the bottom of the barrel of UCLA sorority girls. I’m guessing TriDelt.
Get some DGs or Thetas up in here and then we’ll talk. These two make iJustine look like someone actually worth listening to.
LeMeur, I thought Seesmic was not permitting advertising. Would you do us a favor and ban these guys?
haha wow, this is funny the whole response to “wtf” … I’m not hating in these people, but it seems like they gotta lot of time on their hands..
http://blabtech.blogspot.com
i mean come’on, its obvious that click through rate of this video comment will be very high = pr for docstoc. but its bad pr. you know why? bcos using cute girls to get noticed turns geeks off. you want good pr? atleast ask the girls some intelligent questions relevant to the blog post, so that they can give some thoughtful responses.
dont waste our time. these girls are cute though.damn i said it.
Location-based services will continue to expand as GPS becomes a standard-feature in mobile devices. There are services we’ll love but then again, services we won’t, like Loopt’s deal with CBS Mobile to transmit location-based advertisements to Sprint Nextel and Boost Mobile cellphones. That’s if Sprint is still alive by then.
Will everyone start geo – tagging everything? It’s a cool idea, but I don’t think it is revolutionary by any means.
http://www.schoolshift.com
An online resource for current and prospective college students looking for professor ratings, jobs, class notes, and more.
built with ror = downtime
Fireeagle is a great product, but I am in love with the “Update Location” procedure. I would not mind having a mobile application that updates my location once per hour. I know, I know.
Most developers are screaming it will kill your battery, but we always carry our chargers, plus some mobile phones batteries do not die quickly.
Last time I checked they had a firefox plugin I believe, but a user was still required to click here and there. Why not simply pop up as a short side bar and ask “You are in _IP Lookup_” Update YES or NO. Then I hit it once. That’s all.
In the end I think if you marry Twitter, and FireEagle you can come up with a nice feature.
*Edit line 1: “but I am NOT in love”
With the ekit Travel Journal, we have addressed the issue of battery life (and handset capability) by building the location update into the SIM software and by using the mobile network. Our focus is on international travellers, so battery life is more important, and data can be expensive.
You can also send location updates by SMS (L: London), or if you post an entry by SMS we look up your cell id to work out your location.
We have integrated Fire Eagle so you can update your location in Fire Eagle as you travel.
See http://www.ekit.com/ekit/tj if you want more information.
Rupert
Their logo looks like a flaming Tootsie Pop.
http://www.imageco.com... we never harm candy in our logo designs.
tralalala
Well here is something interesting coming from Yahoo!
A service like twinverse.com could definitely leverage on this service, like they have done with the geoloc capability of Orange group in Europe where people through just a mobile sms where able to post content and interact with other people that were virtually located in the same place.
Twinverse is a virtual world where the landscape is the real geography of our planet.
Are there any iphone apps utilizing Fireeagle yet?
There’s an app called Searchquest which seems to update Fire Eagle.
yah know like, like there is like, like I agree like, yah know like, yeah like stalk you and like
like i have like a blackberry and like coordinate and like talk about women’s beach volleyball and like yahoo and like geo stuff like
I’m missing something here. What’s to prevent the cellular phone companies from taking this market (assuming there is a market for this location stuff)….
AT&T knows where I am all the time when my phone is on. So explain to me (aside from the assumption that the cell phone companies will service charge it) why I need a third party service outside my cell carrier to broadcast my location.
I’m not really that interested in this and don’t see many useful applications for it.
They could get your location, but unless they all agreed on a standard for opening it up to other people—and gave you good privacy features, they wouldn’t be able to make the web react to your location in the same way.
Wayne,
The cell companies have long assumed they had a lock on the location market and have thus not done much (anything really) in many years. They figured consuming apps would have to pay them for ponying up user location.
With smart phones, Fire Eagle, Google cell tower triangulation and other mechanisms, that location is rapidly becoming available to anyone. This means the cell companies can’t rely on selling location data which means they have to build compelling apps on those phones. Not something they’ve been terribly good at in the past.
“So explain to me (aside from the assumption that the cell phone companies will service charge it) why I need a third party service outside my cell carrier to broadcast my location.”
Perhaps to have ads targeted at you. Not that there’s anything good with that.
Congrats on the launch. And congrats, Tom, on losing the arm sling!
I’m not sure what value those two women are adding. It takes longer to understand what they “have to say,” if they had to say anything interesting, it’d be far easier to just read it. But, maybe I’m just oldskool.
It is up to the Editor of the site to decide if a video comment should be up or not, they are moderated using the classic moderation tool, here it’s Wordpress, Seesmic does not decide if a comment is advertising or not. Our community guidelines apply only for videos posted directly from and to seesmic.com
To be clear, up to Michael to accept or not cute girls pitching products using video comments
I see this as a giant boost for their location/geo-based advertising efforts. It clearly states in Yahoo!’s TOS and Privacy agreements that this sort of information will be used to display targeted ADs. While this sort of technology does not bother me, I am sure many people would be taken back by this fact.
Thanks Jason, and I quoted you over at my blog:
http://www.insi...sign.info/blog/
Seesmic vid comment tool is great except for a little disturbance….
I’m sure I’ve seen the girl on the left in a porn flick somewhere. Not sure what her location was, though.
Several ‘positions’, though.
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