Ekit travel journal integrates Yahoo! Fire Eagle

Press release – 13 August 2008 – Ekit Ekit, the leading travel telecommunications provider, and the creator of the ekit Travel Journal (ekit.com/ekit/tj/), today announced the integration of the ekit Travel Journal with Yahoo! Fire Eagle. Ekit’s Travel Journal is an online service that automatically creates a trip journal based on the location of the…

Press release – 13 August 2008 – Ekit

Ekit, the leading travel telecommunications provider, and the creator of the ekit Travel Journal (ekit.com/ekit/tj/), today announced the integration of the ekit Travel Journal with Yahoo! Fire Eagle.

Ekit’s Travel Journal is an online service that automatically creates a trip journal based on the location of the user’s phone. It’s easy-to-use, as there’s no need to manually update the ekit Travel Journal from a Web site.

The Travel Journal automatically updates the user’s location in relation to cell phone towers in more than 100 countries. Friends and family can also use the Travel Journal to effortlessly stay in touch with the traveler via text or calls from their PC. The Travel Journal is a free, value-added service included with the purchase of all ekit international phone packages and SIM cards via its retail partner Telestial (www.telestial.com).

Fire Eagle, an open platform that helps users to take their location to the Web while keeping full control over their location data, became generally available today.

By integrating ekit’s Travel Journal with Fire Eagle, Travel Journal users can update their location automatically and share the location information with other Web services and applications via the Fire Eagle platform. Ekit updates Fire Eagle with the traveler’s physical location using cell tower IDs or locations entered by the customer via their cell phone or Web.

“We’re delighted to work with the Yahoo! Fire Eagle team to integrate the Fire Eagle interface with the Travel Journal,” said John Diamond, ekit chief executive. “I’m impressed by the developer ecosystem which is being grown around Fire Eagle. It’s exciting to see LBS, telco and web 2.0 all start to collide.”

“Ekit offers travelers the ability to automatically maintain a travel journal and update Fire Eagle at the same time, all using a basic mobile phone,” said Tom Coates, head of product for Yahoo! Brickhouse. “We’re excited to be working with them!”

In the future, the ekit Travel Journal will integrate location information via Yahoo! Fire Eagle from other location applications and import them into the Travel Journal. Travelers will also be able to export their location information and publish all or part of their Travel Journal on their favorite social networking sites, as well as upload photos from their cell phones, which can be automatically geo-tagged via sites like Flickr.