Submission + - FireEagle - Yahoo's Service for Geo Information (slashgeo.org)
Lord Satri writes: "TechCrunch, Wired, and I'm sure many others are talking about Yahoo's new FireEagle service which is in alpha release now. TechCrunch describes the service,
"FireEagle, which is built entirely on Ruby on Rails, was originally inspired by Yahoos ZoneTag research product. It is a platform for controlling peoples location information. Tell it (directly or via a third party application built on FireEagles APIs) where you are (give it specific lat/long, or a city name, or a zip code, etc.) and it will note your location. Alternatively, users with GPS phones (or other GPS device) could set it to periodically update FireEagle with geo information."
Wired touches on something I'm sure we'll hear a lot about services that know your location, the "creepy" factor,
"As with most developments in the geo-location realm, FireEagle offers some really cool possibilities I have no doubt that web developers will leap at the chance to offer seamless integration of geodata but it also looks a little bit creepy. Do we really want everyone to know exactly where we are all the time? Of course, if you consider that your mobile service provider already has that information, perhaps concern over making it public is a moot point."
I see plenty of "cool possibilities" to having a single warehouse and API for that kind of data, so I'll be trying to get myself in the alpha-testing along with many others I'm sure."