ubiquitous computing
Location Based Internet
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 | Code | 1 Comment
Nowadays someone’s always introducing “the Internet of <whatever>.”
With blogging was introduced “the Internet of thought.”
With ubiquitous computing, we’ve got “the Internet of things.”
And with Myspace, “the internet of Your Extended Network!”
Yahoo launched a new pixel-happy, lower case named, and Web-2.0 chic “fire eagle” a few months back. Their launch advertised the beginnings of, go figure, a new kind of Internet. Web sites that get your location from your cell phone tower, your laptop, your wireless Internet connection, your text message, and whatever else they get their filthy paws on. There are just as many web sites for sharing your location with… well, whoever. They cite all manner of noble causes like coordinating medical activity, business activity, and gathering all your people together mentally to do it physically. “Geoscrobbling,” they call it. It’s just a little way of saying “oh, by the way, dear Internet, I’m over here.” The guys even provide you with a simple diagram just so you don’t get confused.
Copyright 2008 Yahoo
“But wait”, you say, “this all sounds familiar. Little updates sent to large groups of subscribers? An interface so simple you can update from anything?” It starts to sound a lot like a certain someone else who’s already got the “oh, by the way”-market cornered. When fire eagle launched, I really wanted it to be relevant. I really wanted to figure out some way to use it and have it be a day-to-day tool. Come to think of it, I mostly really wanted it to be something new so I could justify spending a half hour watching that guy talk about it on Vimeo.
If fire eagle really is a new idea, one of their shining stars in the starting lineup of supported sites, BrightKite, puzzles me a bit. Yes, you can update your location on the go with BrightKite. Yes, you can share random thoughts and amusing pictures along with your location. And yes, you can do it all with Twitter. No, you don’t need a fire eagle account if you don’t already have one. In fact, I have yet to see any applications for this that can’t be done just as well if not more easily with Twitter, which is already insanely well established and really popular to boot. Yahoo did spend a lot of money on this, though. There’s a reason why, right? Did they reinvent the wheel again? What did I miss?
edit:
I was thinking today.. and fire eagle doesn’t deserve this sort of chewing out. It’s an api. It relies on other things to provide its usefulness. From the perspective of the avid mini-blogger, a la twitter for example, yes, this is useless. But you don’t build an API immediately knowing that it will become relevant. It’s a concept. We don’t know where the concept is going yet, and we can’t presume to.
Good eagle. You didn’t do anything wrong.