Fire Eagle open for business tomorrow

Posted 04 March 2008 12:26 by Kristof Michiels

Very exciting news! A little bird told me that, as from tomorrow, Yahoo's brand new Fire Eagle service will be open for business. In private beta that is, so if you want to play along, request an invitation through the website: http://fireeagle.yahoo.net/.

Fire Eagle is (from the website): "...the secure and stylish way to share your location with sites and services online while giving you unprecedented control over your data and privacy. We're here to make the whole web respond to your location and help you to discover more about the world around you."

I hope the experience will be as promising as this sounds. It certainly could be a great tool for both users and application developers. Application builders can quickly integrate location-awareness into their applications. Users can experiment with location-based computing in an empowered sort of way. They are in charge and determine which application may know their exact location. And the empowerment can even go further: e.g. some areas can be excluded, so that updates are not given when the user is in that particular area.