Skip to main content

Yahoo’s Fire Eagle Tracks User Locations

Yahoo

After a while in private beta, Yahoo’s Brickhouse development group has set loose public beta of Fire Eagle, a new service that aims to be a centralized hub for users to tap into location-aware Internet applications. The idea is that users update their location info via Fire Eagle—ideally via a mobile phone, but using the Web works too—and a myriad of location aware services will all be able to pick up that information and work their location-specific magic for that users—like alerting you to nearby friends, a great restaurant nearby, updating traffic information, getting directions…and, no doubt one day, being subjected to location-specific ads.

Several applications have already set up interfaces with Fire Eagle, including travel plan service Dopplr, messaging site Pownce, and social networking services like ZKOut and BrightKite.

"Fire Eagle is about making everything on the Internet more useful, fun, or interesting by adding the element of location," said Yahoo’s Brickhouse head Tom Coates, in a statement. "We’re here to help people take their location to the Web by giving them the ability to control how much detail about their location they want to share and which applications they want to share it with."

Fire Eagle enables users to authorize specific Web, phone, or desktop applications that can pull location information, and decide how much information gets shared with selected services. Users can opt to update their locations manually, or (if they have compatible phones or other device) have their location updated automatically. Developers can tap into Fire Eagle to more easily make their applications location-aware: By relying in Fire Eagle, developers don’t have to do all the work of creating a location-aware application infrastructure, they can just ask Yahoo for that information and focus on making their application or services as good as it can be.

Services like Fire Eagle raise obvious privacy concerns—consider how much easier stalking becomes if your target is constantly updating their location information! But Yahoo claims to put the availability of location information completely at the users’ control, even letting users shut down all location reporting for a little "off-grid" time.

Editors' Recommendations

Geoff Duncan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
The Best of Amazon’s 12 Days of Deals on Alexa, Echo, Ring, and Fire TV

Amazon's 12 Days of Deals continues many Cyber Monday deals and bargains on many new products as well, with daily additions and frequent price changes. Find the on-going deals on most products fast on Amazon's 12 Days of Deals page.

The retail giant carried over many of the Cyber Monday deals for Echo devices, including mini-bundles with an Amazon Smart Plug or a smart light bulb added to a smart speaker or smart display. If you're looking for the best deals on Echo, Ring, Blink, Kindle, Fire TV, Fire tablets, eero, or any other Amazon device brands, this is the place.

Read more
Amazon slashes prices on the Fire 7 and Fire HD 8 Tablets plus Kids’ Editions
amazon slashes the prices on fire 7 and hd 8 tablets plus kids editions tablet 2  1

Black Friday is still six weeks away, but Amazon isn't being shy about offering excellent deals on hot products leading up to the holiday sales event. Amazon slashed prices for the Fire 7 Tablet and Fire HD 8 Tablet, the Kids Editions of both, and a bundle that includes a Fire HD 8 Tablet and a Show Mode Charging Dock to convert the tablet into an Alexa-compatible smart display.

We've found the best discounts on Fire Tablets from Amazon and put them all in one place. Whether you're buying early Christmas gifts, adding to your smart home with a Fire HD 8 Tablet as a smart display, or just upgrading family tablets, these five deals can help you save up to $30.
Fire 7 Tablet --- $10 off

Read more
Have a Fire TV? Got kids? Amazon’s child-friendly service is coming to your TV
Amazon Fire TV FreeTime Unlimited

Got a Fire TV Stick? Now you can step away from the TV without worrying about what your child might be watching. That's because Amazon is bringing its FreeTime Unlimited service to Fire TV sticks starting today, October 7.

FreeTime Unlimited, available on Kindles and Fire HD tablets like the all-new Fire HD 10 and Kindle Kids Edition, offers up kid-friendly videos, books, and games for a subscription fee of $3 per month for Prime subscribers and $5 per month for non-Prime subscribers. The books and games aspect of the service isn't making its way to Fire TV Sticks, which will support just the movies and TV shows.
Kid profiles
Don't fret, you won't need to clutter up your Fire TV profile with a bunch of kids shows. Instead, kids get their own profile that keeps them locked in -- they need a pin to leave the walled garden. You can set up to four child profiles (the have a blue background), and you can set age filters for each so the content that's served up remains age-appropriate (FreeTime Unlimited is recommended for ages 3 through 12).

Read more