Yahoo has officially launched a new service, dubbed Fire Eagle, that lets internet users identify their physical location automatically.

The middleware can be built into applications so that internet users can specify their geographical location at any time, with varying degrees of precision. Users can specify which applications are allowed to know their position and turn it on or off at will.

"Fire Eagle is about making everything on the internet more useful, fun or interesting by adding the element of location," said Tom Coates, head of product at Yahoo Brickhouse, the company’s start-up developer. "We're here to help people take their location to the web by giving them the ability to control how much detail about their location they want to share and which applications they want to share it with."

When users sign up for a Yahoo ID, they will be offered the option of signing up to Fire Eagle as well. This will then record their location by PC, mobile or web presence.

Early adopters include Dopplr, a site for sharing travel plans, and Pownce, a site for sending messages and files.

"Fire Eagle allowed us to easily add location data to Pownce using their simple API," said Leah Culver, co-founder of Pownce. "Pownce users can now say where they are and geotag their notes, which adds a new dimension to the service."