Where 2.0: Ride the Fire Eagle: Open Location for All
Tom Coates
“Hello Everyone”
Yahoo! Brickhouse, environment for startup type projects in Yahoo! Small teams working on projects that are “bets for the future”. Ones that might be a big deal in 18 months time.
Fire Eagle, very much a bet on the future. Location tracking services still haven’t gone as mainstream. Fire Eagle is trying to solve some of the small sticking points.
Launch FE 2 months ago, response has been amazing.
“Thank You!”
FE helps people:
- Share their location online
- Control their data & privacy
- Easily build location services
Most location-aware applications have very tight coupling between finding the location and using the location. Both the problems are pretty hard. Because it’s so hard finding the location, a lot of uses for the location don’t get made. One good model would be one person finds the location and many people use that, but that’s a bad model too as it only gives you one source. FE is better as anyone can make an application to find your location, then anyone can make an application to use your location.
Yahoo! Internet Location Platform
Language that we can use to understand location. E.g. when we all talk about San Francisco, we’re all talking about the same San Francisco.
Can update location by entering text on their website, or by providing a string, some cell tower IDs, lat/lon and other methods to the API.
Dopplr - “A social network for frequent travellers”
Dopplr can integrate with Fire Eagle. Authorising requires going to FE site, confirm, then go back to Dopplr. Very simple. FE just manages the location stuff.
OAuth makes this work. It does a lot of security stuff. Dopplr doesn’t necessarily know who I am as far as FE is concerned. Stops people on different services from being able to work out who you are by comparing tokens.
Privacy, we have an idea of how much you want to share. Information can come in but not go out. You can turn update off completely. You can also purge your location information out completely. There’s a new contract that’s being created between websites and users to allow you control of your data. By default we will send you a monthly alert that if you don’t respond to, it will disable your account, so you can’t forget you’re being tracked.
Navizon - positioning system using GPS, WiFi and Phone positioning
Loki - from Skyhook, MyLoki can broadcast your location to FE.
ZoneTag - runs on Nokia S60 phones to geotag photos but now also updates FE
Firebot - allows you to update location using a twitter direct message
Brightkite - can check into a place then submit images, etc. about the palce, updates FE.
Plazes - goes by a wifi hotspot and records location, asks you to enter information or uses information if there is some, updates FE.
spot - combination GPS unit and satellite phone. Doesn’t update FE, we would like it to.
Isaac Daniel GPS & Satellite phone shoes - awesome, nothing to do with FE, Tom wants one.
Using location…
Wikinear - designed for mobile phones, shows 5 nerest wikipedia articles.
Lightpole - helps find restaurants, bars, many POIs Lets you set location but also gets your location from FE.
Outside.in - news stories
Fireball - Conferences
Fire Widgets - local weather forecast
Friends and Family widgets - show where you are
Proximizer - show how close a friend is
Movable type - plugin
All user generated content
last.fm - doesn’t integrate with FE, but would be great to find out where you listen to certain songs.
Friends on Fire - facebook app