Yahoo's Fire Eagle

Yahoo's Fire Eagle stepped out of closed beta for all to use. Fire Eagle is essentially a location broker: it provides location information through devices and services and makes them available as a platform. Developers can then tap into this platform and integrate the location information into their software. One could, for example, make a social platform which tracks the location of its members and lets one friend know where another in.




As you might imagine, a service such as this throws up a lot of privacy concerns. Imagine being able to be tracked by a boss, or colleague, or your better half... To that end, Yahoo has offered a range of privacy options to the end-users. There is also a double opt-in method for the service itself -- you need to sign in to Fire Eagle itself or to a service that integrates the location-aware platform. Moreover, every end-user can choose to expose levels of his or her locations: either an exact location, or a general area information, or a complete information blackout -- which deletes the user's footsteps from the system completely.


Quite a few services and sites have already integrated Fire Eagle into their offerings. Check them out here