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FireEagle posts

Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Web services, Yahoo!, Open Source, Social Software, web 2.0

Clarke lets you update FireEagle from within OS X

Yahoo's FireEagle project has long been a great (albeit under-used) service to let you share your location with other websites. Services such as Dopplr, Brightkite and many others can all update & read your location and use the service to display location-based data.

On the iPhone, there's plenty of free applications that update FireEagle such as yofe, but what if you're working on a desktop or laptop computer? That's where Clarke comes in handy -- a small, open-source utility for OS X that runs in your menu bar, it'll figure out where you are based on the Wi-Fi networks around you.

In earlier versions of Clarke, the updates were based on Skyhook Wireless' database -- the same used by the original iPhone to triangulate your location -- however the utility was recently updated for Mac OS X Snow Leopard and now uses the OS' built-in Core Location system to figure out where you are when run on the newest big-cat.

A free download, developers can also grab the source code over at Github, and the application also lets you easily view nearby data from Flickr, Google Maps, OpenStreetMap and Yahoo Maps.

Filed under: Developer, Fun, Yahoo!, Social Software, iPhone

Metosphere: create geotagged objects with Fire Eagle and iPhone

GeoTagYahoo! Fire Eagle got a lot of attention when it launched back in March, and for good reason: a cross-platform system for building location data into an application? The buzz died down, though, because there weren't any cool applications using Fire Eagle. That's changing now, though, as the first wave of Fire Eagle stuff rolls out. Metosphere for the iPhone is one of the best of this bunch.

Metosphere has several uses. Like any app that takes advantage of Fire Eagle, it can update your location using your GPS or a WiFi hotspot. It also shows you nearby events on Eventful and Upcoming, and nearby Wikipedia pages. There's a map that shows you all of this, plus meetups, emergency alerts, and the best part: messages and geocaches you can create directly from Metosphere. There's no signup required, just use your existing Yahoo! ID.

Geocaching is going to be a big deal very soon, and Metosphere is a great way to play with it on a platform you already know how to use. Show it to your friends and leave each other messages at your favorite hangouts, or start a city-wide scavenger hunt. We'll keep covering new Fire Eagle tools as they advance -- that monthly renewal email is a good reminder to see what developers have been working on.

Filed under: Internet, Yahoo!, Social Software

Yahoo! Kickstart: LinkedIn for college students and alumni

Kickstart
If your university guidance counselor wasn't much help in your job hunt, maybe Yahoo! can help. The internet portal's latest social network helps college students and alumni connect with one another to create a sort of post-grad professional network. In other words, Yahoo! Kickstart is a lot like LinkedIn, except you don't get to connect with coworkers, just people associated with your alma mater.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! execs are hoping to fill a niche somewhere in between Facebook and LinkedIn. The idea is that recent grads don't have all the work connections that LinkedIn users have. And they use Facebook for keeping up with friends, not professional contacts. We're not sure this is an actual niche and not just a marketing gimmick, but only time will tell.

Yahoo! is also reportedly preparing a new service that will let users indicate their physical location at any given time, letting web apps act accordingly. For example, if you're on your home or work computer you might want different settings than if you're using an iPhone.

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The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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