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23 items tagged "Yahoo"

Related tags: maps [+], api [+], Go [+]

Slashgeo

Yahoo's Fire Eagle Out of Beta

Posted: September 8th, 2008, 10:12pm CEST by Satri

Tags: Yahoo

This is a 1-month old news item (still catching up this summer's valuable geonews to share). Introduced late last year, Yahoo's service for geolocation named Fire Eagle is not out of beta. The best coverage I found is on the GEB and APB. Read their entries to learn more. From the APB entry: "I personally think most people don't understand that Fire Eagle alone does nothing. To use it, you need to hook up apps that determine your location (like those on your phone/laptop/etc. - and pay attention to how they use your location data) and then to apps that you want to use your location data (like for finding local restaurants, etc. - and pay attention to how they use your location data). Yahoo sits in between and brokers the information. I think it's a great way to manage location information and privacy as you can turn off or fuzz up data from the collection side before its passed on the use the data side." See also the Yahoo! Internet Location Platform announced last May.
Read more of this story at Slashgeo.

All Points Blog

Journey: Virtual World Built on Real World

Posted: September 4th, 2008, 2:25pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo

TechCrunch describes it this way: "Journeys, a mashup that hopes to appeal to these users by leveraging Flickr and Yahoo Maps APIs to create what it calls a virtual world based on real Earth." The problem is there seems to be no point to it, though to be fair it is labeled "alpha." Your avatar can travel and see the world (with limited info about some points of interest), but the commenters found it dull and computer intensive.
Fire Eagle for All

Posted: August 12th, 2008, 11:24pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo

In other words, Yahoo's Fire Eagle, what I like to call a meta-app because it manages many location-enabled apps, is now open to all. BlinkGeo cited a twitter post announcing the news. Otherwise, it's not yet hit the newswires or the blogosphere. Apparently Greg Sterling from Search Engine Land was there at the Brickhouse when Tom Coates gave the word, but his">[searchengineland.com] post is not yet public (I'm guessing he posted it, then pulled it back - I do that now and again...)

I think Fire Eagle is a great thing; though I'm not sure how it'll make money (if that's its goal) and if the required critical mass of players (there are more in the gallery than last time I looked) will sign on to support it.

---
Some updates now that the announcement has made the rounds.

There are the usual "this invades privacy posts/articles":

Yes, Fire Eagle's cool. It also freaks me out - where Charles Cooper at C|NET misrepresents the tool "(Fire Eagle's not an original idea. There's also Loopt, a cell phone-based service that allows people to track and communicate with friends, as well as Whrrl and Brightkite.)" even though a video below with Rafe Needleman indicates there are no other similar tools at this time. Dan Gilmartin of ULocate pipes in the comments.

Privacy worry over location data - The BBC quotes The Centre for Digital Democracy after the announcement: "while these services will be a powerful force in our lives they are a potential privacy nightmare." The article goes on to note the deeper issue, that other sites (not Fire Eagle) may store location data: "Some blogs note however that while users can purge information from Fire Eagle, this will not delete location data collected over time by authorised sites." Fire Eagle makes it policy quite clear.

Privacy Advocates Are Not Pleased With Yahoo Fire Eagle - dbTechno alleges that headline, but cites no one in particular.

I personally think most people don't understand that Fire Eagle alone does nothing. To use it, you need to hook up apps that determine your location (like those on your phone/laptop/etc. - and pay attention to how they use your location data) and then to apps that you want to use your location data (like for finding local restaurants, etc. - and pay attention to how they use your location data). Yahoo sits in between and brokers the information. I think it's a great way to manage location information and privacy as you can turn off or fuzz up data from the collection side before its passed on the use the data side.

With the open release several more applications have been added to the Gallery, which now you need a Fire Eagle login to access. Some of the new ones: SPOT (the messenger for when you need help), Dash (so you can update Fire Eagle from your in car GPS), BrightKite (so you can provide your location from Fire Eagle to use in that social network).

GIS Lounge - Geographic Information Systems

How to Use Yahoo! Maps in Flex

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 3:06am CEST by Caitlin

Tags: Yahoo maps

The FLEX{er} site provides a quick post covering how to integrate Yahoo! Maps using Flex Builder 3.
Yahoo! Map Updates

Posted: August 2nd, 2008, 4:32am CEST by Caitlin

Tags: Yahoo maps

The Yahoo! Geo Technologies group has announced new updates to Yahoo! Maps. Gus Maldonado, Sr. Product Manager posted about the new upgrades which include: Improved Local Search integration that utilizes the Search/Direct Display Index More user-friendly Driving Directions - a more user-friendly left rail that’s both wider and more legible (larger text), for easier reading of driving [...]

Mapperz - The Mapping News Blog

Yahoo! Zimbra Maps - New! & Updated Yahoo! Local API

Posted: July 31st, 2008, 6:04pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo maps api

Yahoo! Zimbra Maps - New!"Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop is the next-generation email application"Easily set up Zimbra, Yahoo! Mail Plus, AOL and Gmail email accounts with the Account WizardWeb mash-ups ...

Map and GIS News finding blog. With so many Maps and GIS sites online now it is hard to find the good from the not so good. This blog tries to cut the cream and provide you with the newest, fastest, cleanest and most user friendly maps that are available online. News has location and it is mapped.

All Points Blog

Why Fire Eagle hasn't convinced Rory of the wonders of LBS

Posted: July 9th, 2008, 12:29pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo

Rory Cellan-Jones writes at the BBC blog dot.life about his testing of Fire Eagle. I was disappointed that he didn't seem to get or take advantage of the control users have of their location information, but I was impressed he stated the problems he ran into and how he didn't get LBS.

First the problems:

That's the theory. In practice, I've found a couple of problems. I need to make the effort to update my location via Fire Eagle all the time - though as GPS comes to more phones that could happen automatically - and most of the time I just can't be bothered. And when I do, I'm still not sure why I want the world to know where I am.

I've tried using a couple of other services attached to Fire Eagle - but just downloading and signing up has tested my patience to the limits.

I think my main problem is the lack of a network effect - until there are plenty of location-based services and plenty of people are using them, the whole idea just won't have any mass appeal. And I'm still worried that it's a concept which may appeal more to advertisers and technology developers than to users - there does not seem to be any real "need" waiting to be fulfilled.

He bravely twitters that he doesn't get LBS only to be bombarded with tweeters "amazed that I didn't get it." He also received a tweet from Tom Coates (the Yahoo person leading the Fire Eagle charge) noting the app hadn't really launched yet.

I take a few things away from this story, which I expect is not that unusual. First off, Fire Eagle would not be the app I'd use to promote the wonders of LBS. As I've noted, it's for managing LBSs; in and of itself, it's not an LBS. Clearly, unless you are a bit sold on LBS, Fire Eagle is perhaps not worth your time for the reasons Rory mentions. Second, there's a sense, echoed by the Twitter responses, that acceptance of and demand for LBS is somehow genetic (or should be). That news hasn't reached Rory or dare I say many others on the planet. The marketing machine for LBS hasn't created the demand for some chunk of the market (yet). Finally, there's still this lingering notion that LBS is for advertisers, not for those sharing their locations. If LBS is to be ubiquitous, that sentiment needs to be overcome.

Slashgeo

Yahoo! Internet Location Platform Announced

Posted: May 16th, 2008, 8:39pm CEST by Satri

Tags: Yahoo

Announced earlier this week, the Yahoo! Internet Location Platform has been discussed by many geoblogs, including Yahoo's Dan Catt and CNET. Yahoo! has been very active regarding geospatial development in the last few years despite the attention towards Google and Microsoft. From the official page: "The Yahoo! Internet Location Platform provides a resource for managing all geo-permanent named places on Earth. Our purpose in creating the Internet Location Platform is to provide the Yahoo! Geographic Developer Community with the vocabulary and grammar to describe the world's geography in an unequivocal, permanent, and language-neutral manner. The Internet Location Platform is designed to facilitate spatial interoperability and geographic discovery; users can traverse the spatial hierarchy, identify the geography relevant to their users and their business, and in turn, unambiguously geotag, geotarget, and geolocate data across the Web. [...] In simple terms, the Service allows you to look up the unique identifier - called the Where on Earth ID, or WOEID - for almost any named place on the Earth; it also allows you to resolve a WOEID you have received from a third party - such as Fire Eagle or Upcoming - to the place it represents."
Read more of this story at Slashgeo.

All Points Blog

Yahoo's New Internet Location Platform

Posted: May 13th, 2008, 4:41pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo

I read a few news article about this new platform, the Yahoo Internet Location Platform, including Dan Katt's blog post but I didn't get it. Those articles, I think, are written for programmers, the folks who'll use the platform. Still, this is it's very cool and I think the rest of us should know what it does! And, frankly, I think too many people are too wrapped up in other platforms to see what's going on at Yahoo. I think Fire Eagle is killer, but I keep talking to people who don't know what it is. I don't want that to happen with YILP, so here's what this new platform is, as I (a non-programmer) understand it.

Yahoo has and uses a big database of location information. It's got points (places of interest), towns and cities, states, and countries in it. Each has an ID, called a WOEID (Where on Earth ID, Yahoo acquired WhereOnEarth a London company in 2005). Yahoo has opened up that database to the world complete with an API (application programming interface). That means programs can ask questions of and receives answers from this big database via a Web service.

Like what? Like:

Give me the WOEID of Boston, MA. (Why? Because maybe you to find pictures of Boston from Flickr. You'd use that value to ask Flickr for the pics.)
Give me the location of 2507854 (Where would you get that? you could get it from Fire Eagle!)
Give me the "next level up" (parent) geography for my point of interest, or in other words, in what city is the Eiffel Tower?
Give me the neighboring ZIP Codes to 12795711 (the WOEID of a ZIP Code).
Another cool one - the ability to ask for the name of a place in a specific language!

Many have already asked for a comparison to Geonames (a free online database with services built on it used by many location-based services to do some of these things). My sense is that Yahoo will tap into the wisdom of the masses to grow this database, just as Geonames does. And, since Yahoo's already aligned with OpenStreetMap, perhaps it can play well with Geonames? Could this database end up as the worlds single place coding database?
Where to search queries come from?

Posted: April 29th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo

Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land details a paper from Cornell and Yahoo titled Spatial Variation in Search Engine Queries. The idea is to map the "centroid" of search queries. What's the center of the search for the Red Sox? Other teams? Pretty much what you'd expect. Other queries, such as about hurricanes change at the storm moves. Interesting, but how's it useful? I guess it could be used as another "context" valuable to determine the type of query of its not clear.

Slashgeo

Yahoo! Maps Biggest Imagery Update

Posted: April 22nd, 2008, 7:46pm CEST by Satri

Tags: Yahoo

A month after their previous data update, Yahoo! Maps announced their biggest imagery update since the program inception (via TMR). From the announcement: "While we’ve steadily added new cities around the world every month (over 500 now) since the beginning, we haven’t made as much of a change in the US until today. Our latest release improves both breadth and depth. Going wide, we’ve made big improvements in our wall-to-wall coverage of the United States, improving our back-drop data for a number of complete states, including California, Oregon, New York, the Carolina’s, and numerous other states in the west and midwest." Mapperz also informs us Yahoo Go! 3 Maps in beta has also been updated.
Read more of this story at Slashgeo.

AnyGeo - Anything Geospatial

Yahoo! and Google sitting in a tree... K I S S I N G...

Posted: April 10th, 2008, 3:45pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo

Interesting to see how Yahoo! is looking to Google for help in serving up ads for their search results. this comes as Yahoo! tries to fend off hostile takeover from Microsoft. Could Google possible...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Mapperz - The Mapping News Blog

Yahoo Go! 3 (Beta) Maps Updated

Posted: April 9th, 2008, 2:00pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo Go

Yahoo Go Beta 3 Maps updated Yahoo Go 3 beta is now on version 3.0.0.18 Directions are now supported across borders - UK & France UK has Driving directions overviews (quickest/shortest who...

Map and GIS News finding blog. With so many Maps and GIS sites online now it is hard to find the good from the not so good. This blog tries to cut the cream and provide you with the newest, fastest, cleanest and most user friendly maps that are available online. News has location and it is mapped.

All Points Blog

Yahoo Maps India Adds Nine Languages

Posted: April 4th, 2008, 2:08pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo

In what the Channel Times says is a unique move, the company will now offer the service in Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali and Punjabi. The article goes on to wonder if its worth the effort as the Indian population has limited Internet access and most people live in the cities. The offering includes many features including "key landmarks along the route (ATMs, hospitals, etc.), the walking direction."
The Scoop on FireEagle

Posted: April 1st, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo

No, I didn't get an invite, but Brady at O'Reilly did and he explains how it works and why you should care.

AnyGeo - Anything Geospatial

WikiNear, the location-sensitive WiKiNear - using Yahoo's fire eagle + Google maps API

Posted: March 23rd, 2008, 5:56pm CET

Tags: Yahoo

WikiNear, the location-sensitive WiKi... this cool app. uses Yahoo's fire eagle - you'll need an invitation from Yahoo! to use this - the skinny of it is that the app. uses your location to locate...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

All Points Blog

Outside.in Uses FireEagle for "Facebook feed applied to geo"

Posted: March 17th, 2008, 3:11pm CET

Tags: Yahoo

Some interesting tidbits came out of the discussion between Stephen Johnson CEO of outside.in, a hyperlocal news site, and Henry Jenkins at SXSW (South by Southwest, the tech/music/arts event held in Austin last week) Jenkins is Co-Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT.

"[outside.in CEO] Johnson took the opportunity to describe his recent project: Our project, Outside.in, is trying to build out the infrastructure for the geographic web. The fear in the 1990s is that no one would want to live in a city again because of the digital revolution, but the opposite has been true. The Internet is actually an urban location enhancing device. At the level of neighborhood and community, people care passionately about what is happening. People have a lot of expertise, a great deal of interest, and that zone is completely uncovered by traditional media."

"We built Outside.in as a service to help people see those conversations and use geotagging tools to tag different aspects of neighborhoods, Johnson expanded. Were about to launch on my radar, which is basically the Facebook newsfeed applied to geography. Weve been working with Yahoo and their new location technology Fire Eagle. It lets you enter your location and get back all the conversations happening within a certain radius. You can zoom out to see the whole neighborhood, the city, etc. So new tools can amplify what local experts on the ground have been doing traditionally by word of mouth."

- Gamasutra
Podcast: Apple iPhone SDK and Yahoo! Fire Eagle Open Doors to LBS Apps

Posted: March 11th, 2008, 2:37pm CET

Enclosure: [download]

Tags: Yahoo

This past week two of the many tech players with a toe in the geospatial waters, Apple and Yahoo, announced new developer offerings that will add to the twists and turns location based services have taken on the road to maturity. One of the services of the iPhone SDK is Core Location, meaning developers can develop native applications that take advantage of the pseudo-location abilities. We'll have a look at the iPhone SDK and Fire Eagle from a geospatial perspective plus explore what the real reason is for wanting navigation on your mobile device.

Subscribe to Podcast RSS

Listen Now (to download, right click on the link at left and choose "save target as")

Read the show notes

Missed any podcasts? Want to subscribe via iTunes, Yahoo, etc? Here's the index with all the info.
RunningMap.com Updated

Posted: March 6th, 2008, 1:00pm CET

Tags: Yahoo

Word from Lat49 (the ads in maps folks) that a partner's app, RunningMap.com (from GeoSport Mapping Inc) has been updated. I confess, there are now so many services (free and fee) to save your routes, I never visited this one. The updates are user accounts and the ability to save maps as public or private. Also, the site is no longer in beta (I think....) and hopes to make money via the Lat49 ads. One other key point: the site is built on Yahoo! Maps and has been since 2006.

Slashgeo

Yahoo! Maps Updates Data and User Interface

Posted: March 6th, 2008, 1:21am CET by gywright

Tags: Yahoo

Yahoo! Local and Maps Blog announces a major update to their Yahoo! Maps page. The new version has, "... a number of improvements including; new neighborhood data, expanded worldwide coverage, and stylistic improvements." See the Yahoo! post for more details on the improvements.
Read more of this story at Slashgeo.

All Points Blog

Yahoo Maps My News

Posted: February 21st, 2008, 2:13pm CET

Tags: Yahoo

At least it does in the Rocky Mountain News. The app is here (flash-based) Stories are color coded as news, sports, business or spotlight.
Yahoo NewsGlobe: Just Another News Mashup?

Posted: February 14th, 2008, 2:56pm CET

Tags: Yahoo

Yes, a Yahoo mashup is in the news; well actually it tracks the news. NewsGlobe is yet another answer to the question: how do we put news on a map? This time the answer is using RSS feeds, Yahoo geocoding, Flash and a a 3-D ActionScript open source library called Papervision3D to put it all on the map. Ideally stories are posted by dateline location (nothing fancy like MetaCarta analytics going on) and the number of stories at a location is shown by a 3D column of corresponding height. You can watch the globe spin in "autoplay" and take you to stories or chose "interactive mode" and spin it yourself.

I guess this is the ultimate mashup, since everyone keeps building them. I'm just not sure we want our news organized that way! That said, there may be far more interesting things developers could do with technology stack.

- Computerworld
Nokia Should Acquire Yahoo!

Posted: February 7th, 2008, 2:00pm CET

Tags: Yahoo

Stephen Wellman at InformationWeek offers five reasons, which I paraphrase:

- Nokia wants to be a Web company and Yahoo already is
- Updating Yahoo! mobile offerings could make Nokia king of mobile location services
- Yahoo could help Nokia brand in the U.S.
- Yahoo would give it a desktop ad biz (it already has a mobile one)
- Nokia can't let Google or Microsoft gain any Internet marketshare if it wants to be a serious player

TOP RSS Atom Gregarius 0.5.5 Tentatively valid XHTML1.0, CSS2.0 Last Update: Tue 07 Oct 2008 04:59:52 AM CEST

GISWiki.NEWS.Reader » Tags » Yahoo

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23 items tagged "Yahoo"

Posted: September 8th, 2008, 10:12pm CEST by Satri

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: September 4th, 2008, 2:25pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: August 12th, 2008, 11:24pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 3:06am CEST by Caitlin

Tags: Yahoo maps

Posted: August 2nd, 2008, 4:32am CEST by Caitlin

Tags: Yahoo maps

Posted: July 31st, 2008, 6:04pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo maps api

Posted: July 9th, 2008, 12:29pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: May 16th, 2008, 8:39pm CEST by Satri

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: May 13th, 2008, 4:41pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: April 29th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: April 22nd, 2008, 7:46pm CEST by Satri

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: April 10th, 2008, 3:45pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: April 9th, 2008, 2:00pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo Go

Posted: April 4th, 2008, 2:08pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: April 1st, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: March 23rd, 2008, 5:56pm CET

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: March 17th, 2008, 3:11pm CET

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: March 11th, 2008, 2:37pm CET

Enclosure: [download]

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: March 6th, 2008, 1:00pm CET

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: March 6th, 2008, 1:21am CET by gywright

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: February 21st, 2008, 2:13pm CET

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: February 14th, 2008, 2:56pm CET

Tags: Yahoo

Posted: February 7th, 2008, 2:00pm CET

Tags: Yahoo