Fire Eagle is Useless in Thailand
This is followup post to Problem of Location-Based Service in Thailand (in Thai, sorry).
Let I demonstrate it by the highly-anticipated Yahoo! Fire Eagle.
The first location Bangkokians will think of is Siam Square. The result is quite impressive.
You might see, while the location is right, the detail in the map is missing. Poor Yahoo, oh no, poor Thailand.
Let’s try the next, Siam Paragon.
Oops. Fire Eagle put me somewhere in Kentucky (KY). This is the result of Fire Eagle (wrong) guessing. You can try by yourself with Siam Center or Impact Arena or whatever. Siam Center is just only one of few exceptions.
The second problem (incorrect pinpointing) is easy to fix if you have a GPS. But is that what you actually want? Do you want a correct location (x.x degree north, y.y degree east) in the midst of blank field?
The missing thing is data.
All we want is the process-able geo location, not the correct location on nowhere (but it’s always nicer to have both). I have no idea Yahoo can fix this due to the problems from previous post.
Let see the UK example for comparison. Just put only my postcode S1 4HG.
You got it now, detailed map and correct location. I’m sitting around 20 metres far from the pinpoint.
God bless Thailand.
- mk's blog
You may call me paranoid, but why should I tell a company where I am, where I go?
@timo, it's not telling a company, it's telling your friends via a company software
Honestly, by using this service, you not only tell your friends but also Yahoo (in that case).
Web 2.0 seems to improve their user's exhibitionism, and by doing so we seem to loose more and more the right to privacy, reduce ourselves to mere data that private companies harvest for marketing reasons, or government agencies to find out about unwelcome political thoughts.
This aspect of the net ... I try to convince myself that this is ok, but I fail in this.
Too pessimistic?
I got same result. Map detail in Thailand is poor.
long way to go for Fire Eagle in Thailand.
@timo:
I agree on that. Yahoo (or other providers) will know your current location but that's the matter of trust. You must trust Yahoo on their privacy policy first (bigger companies will get more advantage for sure).
It's the same as putting your photos on Facebook or Flickr. No choices!
One solution is putting only rough location (e.g. "Bangkok" or "London") that might be avoid some stalking problems.
Why not use google?
Google Map in my WinMo (HTC Touch Cruise) is accurate enough,
even when GPS is off, I think it just uses cell base station info to locate me.
