There’s a real buzz around location-based services right now – the rapid increase in the number of GPS-enabled mobile phones and high speed data for mobiles are combining to open up all sorts of new opportunities for using location data in new and creative ways.
Yahoo! has spotted this – its Fire Eagle location sharing service has been in private beta for a while now, and today it’s launched properly – check it out at fireeagle.yahoo.net.
Fire Eagle acts as a broker for location data – you can use a range of sources to update your location with Fire Eagle and then use the service to control which third-party services your location is then shared with.
On the surface this might not seem like a lot of functionality, but the potential for its use is huge – in the same way as the simplicity of Twitter has created a platform for sharing information in ways that go far beyond the pure functionality of the service itself.
At Map My Tracks we’ve been working hard to integrate our mobile GPS live tracking application with Fire Eagle. Map My Tracks users can now share their mobile location information free with Yahoo! Fire Eagle – from once per hour right up to every minute. This provides users with an easy real-time feed of their location that they can then use in whichever way they wish.
(disclosure: in case it’s not obvious, Map My Tracks is a client of mine)