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'by being able to personalize itself to where you are while giving you unprecedented control over your data and privacy'

How so? You're telling a multinational corporation and all its advertisers exactly where you are.

It seems we've heard this argument before recently. Enhance your privacy by giving it away for free.

I can see lots of interesting uses for location based services, and I'd say that within a couple of years they'll be common, and perhaps even the Next Big Thing.

That said, imagine the data that will be stored on Yahoo!'s (or whoever's) servers. They could create a complete profile of where you travel - who you visit, what shops you go to etc. The police would love this data, as would advertisers. This might make people more aware of privacy than anything else...

It's not about telling [Advertisers|Corporations|Shops] where you are. It's about *knowing* where you are. From there, you can choose to see bars and gigs. Or maybe just a good restaurant.

Invaluable if you're in an unfamiliar city and you want to see a friendly face or go to a "known good" venue.

as long as it's all anonymous then it should be ok

Rory: I'm surprised you didn't mention 'Brightkite' (see: ) - this site has become very popular among the geek crowd on Twitter since it launched some months ago (which Tom must've noticed as well) and really could have been the catalyst for Fire Eagle's introduction at the moment. Personally, I suspect Brits might raise more questions about privacy than the Americans (in a similar way that Google Streetview has come under fire a bit).

Doesn't O2 already provide a Location Info service, directing the user to various local amenities?

I can already use the GPS and map facilities on my Nokia N95 to find the nearest (though sadly not necessarily the cheapest) petrol station when I'm away from home, but recently, when I had a flat tyre while on holiday, I had to phone KwikFit to ask a human operator for the location of their nearest store. It would have been much better if I could have just used passed my location from my GPS application to the KwikFit website, to find their nearest outlet.

Likewise, I can report potholes etc. to many councils by telling them the relevant postcode (but, away from home, I often don't know that) or by finding my location on a map on their site (not always easy on a mobile device). I want to be able to tell my phone to paste the coordinates of where I am into the web form for reporting such things.

Before, I'd like to see it possible to share your location with a friend by SMS. ie. Press a button to send a text message with your exact GPS co-ordinates, which your friend can then see on their map - excellent for meeting at festivals, etc.

Numerous programs exist out there to do it, but chances are your friend won't use the same one you do. I thought Nokia's purchase of Navteq would soon lead to some integrated solution by them, but it hasn't.

I reckon our best hope is Google Maps: it's free, it's almost a de-facto standard, it integrates with GPS and SMS, and it already allows sending a location from the map - just that it currently sends an address, not the coordinates. Add a 'Send coordinate' feature, and suddenly we'll be finding each other again.

With a new piece of technology (or in this case, just a bit of integration), there is a clear progression it undertakes - the Hype Cycle -

This will likely follow the same thing. People will get very excited about the possibility of all the new thing they can do, but after a while get bored and start rejecting it - stocks will crash, articles will be written...and then we'll discover that a bit of it was really very useful.

The weird thing is that even knowing that this cycle takes place, we are doomed to follow it...

How long do you think it will be before the police are tracking you with this technology? Do you really want to explain why you were in a particular location at a particular time?

With the present government you would always be looking over your electronic shoulder.

This would just become another method of surveillance.

I don't need the world to know where I am. I know where I am, and i can find what I want without it being thrown at me. This is a solution looking for a problem.

BLATANT PLUG!! Dskeeles, there is a service that locates your friends via their mobile - sniff – ‘Social Network Integrated Friend Finder’ (www.sniffu.com) which launched in the UK last month. It’s LBS not GPS but it effectively does the same thing – locates your mates with one text. You can also use it through that other modern wonder, Facebook.

In common with most new technology a large proportion of early adopters will be teenagers.

What better way to protect them than to have their location constantly available for anyone to access.

Location based services aren't necessarily a bad idea but there has to be a limit on how much personal information is publically available for safety reasons.

This applies to everybody because the slow erosion of privacy for the sake of experiencing 'the next big thing' will be almost impossible to reinstate at a later date.

ha.and if in the future u suddenly find yuhself in a dictatorship it will be so easy to be controlled and arrested...........these stuff are like Trojan horses!

In principle, I think this is a great idea. Just make sure you have access to your home webcam so you can watch your house being burgled while you are getting drunk in your new clothes!

Fireeagle has too much potential to be ignored even by non-geeks. I can't wait to get my account.

You see, when it's integrated with Yahoo Events, Yahoo and other 3rd party calendars such as Yahoo calander it's going to be out of this world.

For instance, if I have an appointment with someone, it makes sense that fireagle lets the other party know my location, 1 hour before, during and slightly after the end meeting time. That way if I'm late, the 3rd party knows about it. Integrated with the right apps, these services will let the right people know at ONLY the right times where I am. Very, very useful. I find nothing scary about it at all. If my mobile phone network - O2 can triangulate where I am, then I have no problem with Yahoo knowing about it and for that data to automatically be shared with whom I want it shared with.

My only concern is that employers (or anyone else) shouldn't be allowed to pressurize or blackmail people for access to such data.

The iPhone does some clever trickery to start with a very broad location and then "zoom in" based on Wifi and (in the new phone) also supplementing this with actual GPS coordinates... The first security app I'm aware of that takes advantage of this to let you know where your lost or stolen iPhone is hiding is iRedHanded

Does anyone know of any others?

It's interesting to see that so far most of the applications the commenters have suggested have been push apps: send your location to a friend, send your location to a meeting attendee, adding specific locations to a report of an incident/issue on the roads, etc.

Even some of the examples mentioned in the Twitter messages aren't too bad, depending on implementation. Attaching location to content? Sensible enough if it is done by a purposeful action, but not always necessary and sometimes excessively revealing. Finding local gigs and cinema listings? Again, sensible, but best done by having your phone (or other mobile device) populate the field for you. Same with "are my friends near-by" - best if done as a "are any friends in..." that can be auto-populated (because what about the situation where you are in Bolton and want to know who is in Manchester before you head off?)

I'm 23, but I'd still not trust the majority of the uses the companies would want to put this to. Having the store itself have a short-range transmitter that passively pushes an offer to my phone without being able to identify who it pushed it to wouldn't be too bad, but phoning home to pull data about a variety of things that advertisers want you to know about is too invasive. That, plus you have little/no control over the data transfer and the incurred costs (which would be huge on PAYG!)

To all those who are happy to have their every movement published to some service: I look forward to the day that your insurance goes up because criminals have found it's a wonderful way to find people who are away from their home.

One of the best apps for tracking friends with Fire Eagle is [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator] the application also runs in Facebook...

All this location based stuff is fantastic in principle but in practice all it will lead to is more breaches of privacy, more spam advertising and just general intrusion on our daily lives.

I don't know about anyone else here but when I walk down the street I don't want an SMS every 5 yards inviting me into the pub, clothes shop, barbers etc. and the way things are being done these days (Steam use in PC video gaming is a prime example) we won't be asked if we want to use it, we'll be told by the companies peddling it that it's great and we have to use it...

Not only that but with data fraud on the increase criminals will more and more use such "next big things" as a means to fund themselves and it gets easier and easier the more people adopt such things.

Also as with all new tech this is something that's only for "those what can afford it".

By the time the Average Joe* in the street actually gets affordable access to capable devices and apps it'll be prehistoric.

*Average Joe - someone who doesn't work in London, usually earns less than (as much as half) the national average salary of £24k, which is largely based on the average salary in London and the immediate area, and cannot afford to pay £30+ pcm for an iPhone or similar device.