Yahoo's Location-Based Platform Takes Flight

Yahoo has launched Fire Eagle, a platform for location-based services that it says makes life easier for developers to create geo-aware applications.In beta since March, Fire Eagle is a free service already in use by more than 50 third-party developers, according to Yahoo. In use, it accepts location data from devices like mobile phones or from users themselves and makes that information available programmatically to third-party services. Users have control over how much, if any, of their information is distributed, and Yahoo doesn't store old data.

"Developers can focus on how they can use location in their services without having to build the infrastructure to work out where their users are. Fire Eagle -- combined with Yahoo's full suite of geo technologies -- now makes it practical for any service to become location-aware easily and inexpensively," the company said in a statement.InformationWeek, The New York Times