RSSNew Yahoo service shares users' locations with online services
By Tim Conneally | Published March 6, 2008, 5:43 PM
Fire Eagle is Yahoo's location-aware middleware, which ultimately lets users share their locations with online services, so those sites and applications can deliver results relevant to where they are.
Ten thousand invitation codes were sent out yesterday, in addition to the literal golden tickets given out to those present at Etech in San Diego. Yahoo hopes to entice developers to integrate Fire Eagle into their services to help make location-specific data readily accessible.
Users can set the level of Fire Eagle's awareness -- country, state, city, or geo-coordinate level. When they visit those services, they will be able to receive as specific information as they so choose.
In addition to traffic reporting, locating individuals, and isolating local TV content, Tom Coates of Brickhouse said users will be able to retrieve "exchange rates, local radio, local maps, current weather, nearby photos, timezones, public holidays, local laws...and nearby ICBM missile silos."
And though Coates says Fire Eagle may seem trivial from the user's perspective, he notes there are already 50,000 geo-tagged and categorized locations in Wikipedia alone.
Bruce Sterling is credited with coining the term "Spimes," or objects that are fully trackable in space and time throughout their lifespan. Coates says he loves the idea, and that Fire Eagle has brought spimes' functionality into the real world.
This is getting really scary. I'm not one to dream up conspiracy theories, but this idea gave me the chills.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against geo-tagging, if that's your thing. This development, however, gives me the impression that I'm about to become an unwilling participant. It's just a matter of time, folks.
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As far as I am concerned, it is no ones business on line where I am, let alone yahoo. A Dangerous idea!!!! Yahoo should be careful on what they share, or they can loose allot of support and people and I would be one of them.
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...why missile silos?
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don't know? maybe so the terrorist can find them...
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I believe he was making light of concerns about the terrorism potential of mapping and locating apps (Google Earth, etc.). If thats the case then it shows just how clueless and naive people like him are. Global visual mapping services have been linked to virtually all recent terrorist plots. I hope that the government is carefully monitoring usage patterns of these sites, but its more likely that their asleep at the wheel just like the Fort Sam Houston base commander.
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