Location, location, location — that’s been the time-honored mantra for property buyers for centuries. But now it’s getting personal.
In case you haven’t noticed, hundreds of millions of people around the planet now carry personal tracking devices around with them every day. Their cellphones broadcast their location all the time. Tech firms and marketers see it as a huge opportunity, but privacy advocates are squirming at the implications.
The worries grew last week.
Web giant Yahoo on Tuesday unveiled an application called Fire Eagle that allows users to easily share their location via their mobile phone with friends, Internet programs, their home automation system or anything else that is connected to the world’s vast digital net.
Yahoo has made the program freely available to any developer who wishes to use it. A tour-book company could sell online tours that self-narrate over the phone as users move from landmark to landmark on a visit to London.
“For years, we have been talking about location-based services as the next frontier of the Internet,” Internet development consultant Tim McCullen said. “Fire Eagle is a huge step in making that happen.”
Yahoo didn’t invent location based services. Global positioning system (GPS) navigation devices already offer drivers numerous options. But the feeling is that with devices like the iPhone spreading the mobile Internet, the sector is about to take off.
Already 50 programs are incorporating the service into their applications.
A start-up called Loopt allows you automatically broadcast your location to selected recipients on a real-time basis. Blogging platform SixApart allows users to automatically geo-tag their locations, and the Doppler social network allows frequent travelers to share their locations.
POSSIBILITIES
Of course, there are more obvious uses for LBS [location-based service] programs, such as finding the nearest business or service, automated-teller machine or restaurant; navigation aids; and the tracking of people, vehicles or traffic.
But the major beneficiaries could be advertisers, who are drooling at the prospect of sending promotions to mobile users based on their locations — alerting them to special discounts at nearby stores, for example.
The use of location-based services is moving beyond the Internet. California regulators recently passed Pay As You Drive insurance legislation that would allow insurance companies to place tracking devices in cars and calculate rates according to actual mileage driven.
PRIVACY
Not surprisingly, privacy advocates are deeply concerned about the implications of the new technology.
“Where I drive, when I get there and whether I stop on the way is not the business of my insurance company or any other corporation who wants to place eyes in my car,” says Carmen Balber of the group Consumer Watchdog.
Yahoo counters privacy concerns by noting that Fire Eagle differentiates itself from other services by the ease with which it allows users to control what information is released about them and to whom.
But that’s of little comfort to privacy advocates who note that most people do not delve down into software programs to customize features.
“For individuals who do not want their location to be known, these services could be harmful,” said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
TRACKING
Critics wonder if users will realize that copies of their data will be stored by virtually every application that connects into Fire Eagle as well, making it extremely difficult for anyone to completely erase their tracks.
Telecom expert James Middleton wonders whether the attraction of location-based services may be over-hyped, pointing out that people who go to a restaurant generally won’t wait until they are standing on an unfamiliar street corner to decide where to eat.
“The industry has been wandering around in circles looking for killer services and applications that might not exist,” he said. “As the joke goes, a really useful LBS application would be one that could point you to a really useful LBS application.”
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last