Skyhook Wireless, a provider of the Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS), today released MyLoki, a new location sharing service that feeds your Loki location to personal blogs and social networking sites like Facebook.
Real time location broadcasting, says Loki, allows you to connect with friends, meet new people, and to explore with those who travel in similar places. It can also provide information about who we are — for better or worse.
Loki is now available for almost all Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices including laptops and cell phones. Platforms now supported by Loki include Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Mobile, Mac OS X, and Symbian S60.
Users can share their location through microblogs like Jaiku, or post location updates to any RSS feed that supports GeoRSS, like Google MyMaps and the MyLoki profile page. Locr is a photo-sharing community with focus on geo-tagging.
The new MyLoki Facebook app provides a seamless way to keep your network of friends up to date on your current location. Yahoo’s new Fire Eagle service is already integrated with Loki to simplify location updates.
All of these capabilities include full privacy controls to protect users, says Loki. The new version of Loki also introduces a web-based gallery of location channels that each user can manage on their personal FindMe page.
“Hundreds of thousands of people have downloaded Loki already,” said Mike Shean, vice president of business development and co-founder of Skyhook Wireless. “MyLoki will make it easier to create new experiences in the physical world and share your experiences in the digital world.”
In related news, the creator of the web said consumers need to be protected against systems that track activity on the internet.
Sir Tim told BBC News he would change his internet provider if it introduced such a system. Plans by leading internet providers to use Phorm, a company which tracks web activity to create personalised adverts, has sparked controversy.
“I want to know if I look up a whole lot of books about some form of cancer that that’s not going to get to my insurance company and I’m going to find my insurance premium is going to go up by 5% because they’ve figured I’m looking at those books,” said Berners-Lee.
CBS has launched a new program to get its local news headlines onto blogs and social-media sites, the CBS division said Monday.
Called the CBS Local Ad Network, it’s a way for participating region-focused blogs to pull in extra cash by embedding CBS news widgets on their sites and splitting the revenue of accompanying ads with CBS.
Maybe Microsoft’s SideGuide could use MORE targeting. All I seem to get (on MetroFi’s free service) is celebrity gossip and crime stories.
I don’t see any evidence of location-based advertising or web activity targeting. Maybe I should be happy about that. But maybe Microsoft makes more money selling my surfing database to third parties without showing their hand.
