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The TUAW Daily Update Podcast for March 19, 2014
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get some the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the player at the top of the page. The Daily Update has been moved to a new podcast host in the past few days. Current listeners should delete the old podcast subscription and subscribe to the new feed in the iTunes Store here.
The TUAW Daily Update Podcast for February 26, 2014
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get some the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the player at the top of the page. The Daily Update has been moved to a new podcast host in the past few days. Current listeners should delete the old podcast subscription and subscribe to the new feed in the iTunes Store here.
Dutch theme park taking advantage of iBeacons
During yesterday's Apple earnings call, CFO Peter Oppenheimer brought up the fact that Apple has installed iBeacon technology throughout a number of Apple Stores to provide customers with information on products and their location in the stores. Now iPhoned, a Dutch iPhone-centric website, says that a Dutch theme park will be using iBeacons starting in March to provide visitors with information. The theme park, Fluwel's Tulpenland (Tulip Land), specializes in displaying Dutch tulips. As the first theme park in Europe to use iBeacons to provide additional information to visitors, Fluwel's Tulpenland went to an Amsterdam startup, LabWerk, to implement the technology. The Fluwel's Tulip Land app will be available for the annual opening of the park on March 29. Relevant information about each section of the park is displayed on visitors' phones as they get near an iBeacon. Floris Boekel of LabWerk was interviewed by iPhoned and noted that the challenge of iBeacons lies with discovering the potential of the technology. "In addition to the future of iBeacons in retail, museums and theme parks, we see great potential (for example) in events and care." Thanks to Gijs Ettes of iPhoned.nl for the tip.
Zuli Smartplug: iBeacon for the home
The news in the iBeacon world is warming up prior to CES, where we're sure to hear a lot about the Bluetooth Low Energy technology. There's a Kickstarter that ends tomorrow and is just on the verge of reaching funding that wants to bring iBeacon into the home. The product, called the Zuli Smartplug, is about 95 percent funded with less than a day to go. According to the developers, three or more Zuli Smartplugs connect and alert each other when a homeowner with an iOS 7 app-equipped iPhone walks into the home. The Zuli Smartplugs actually form a mesh network that determines your location in your house, and then turn lights or appliances on or off when you walk into or leave a room. All this is done without touching your phone. We'll let Taylor Umphreys from Zuli tell you the rest of the story, but this looks like a wonderful Kickstarter to back if you're into the world of connected things. Update 08/20/14: You can now visit the Zuli website at www.zuli.io.
iBeacons will deliver location-based access to Newsstand publications
Here's another brilliant use of the iBeacons technology that arrived with iOS 7: making Newsstand publications available for free when a user is within a specific area. London-based Exact Editions, a digital publishing startup, is using iBeacons as part of its ByPlace program, which allows publishers to specify locations where magazines can appear without the need for a subscription fee. TechCrunch's Darrell Etherington points out how this could be useful to businesses. A coffee shop "could subscribe and enable access to full magazines to patrons who come in." I'd personally like my dentist to use the service to provide access to magazines other than ancient issues of People and Highlights for Kids... Exact Editions' Daniel Hodgkin says that the first showcase for iBeacons will be Bar Kick in Shoreditch, London. Patrons of the bar can pick up a soccer magazine -- When Saturday Comes -- and fashion and culture magazine Dazed and Confused. For publishers, the benefits are that they sell subscriptions to businesses that then expose the publication to customers. Some of those customers might then subscribe to the publication themselves. For those businesses, offering the publication is a way to add value and provide an incentive for customers to walk in the door. This use of iBeacons demonstrates one more way that the technology will be used to benefit both businesses and consumers.
MacBeacon and Locate for iBeacon: An inexpensive way for developers to design and test iBeacons
iBeacons are a hot topic and getting hotter. It seems like we're hearing a lot about retailers and others who are chomping at the bit to use the short-range, highly focused location technology for things as varied as in-building directions or targeted advertising. But how are developers able to start creating iBeacon-enabled apps without having one of the Bluetooth devices on hand? That's where some tools from Washington, DC-based Radius Networks can help out. The company recently announced MacBeacon (US$9.99), which allows any Bluetooth 4.0 (Bluetooth Low Energy) equipped Mac to be set up as a test iBeacon. If a developer is just getting his or her feet wet in the iBeacon world, the company even has a free iOS app called Locate for iBeacon available. MacBeacon allows developers to create beacon profiles that provide full iBeacon functionality. For developers who want to test iBeacon-enabled apps, it's a great way to see how the apps react to proximity to iBeacons. Devs can give the iBeacon a name for labeling purposes (it's not broadcasted by the beacon), generate a UUID, set group identifiers and adjust the beacon's power level. A full help page provides both an introduction to iBeacons as well as assistance in using the app. The Locate for iBeacon app does exactly what the name implies -- it locates iBeacons. But it does more than that, providing distance measurements between the iOS device and the iBeacon, a way to calibrate the iBeacon and also a way to turn an iOS device into an iBeacon itself. A developer could theoretically just use the Locate for iBeacon app for testing purposes. Radius Networks also has iBeacon hardware development kits available (US$99.99 to $149.99). Based on the popular Raspberry Pi single-board PC, these kits feature one or two Bluetooth LE transmitters and come with iBeacon software that works with Apple's iBeacon SDK. The company has developer tools available, including the Message Radius platform (for pushing notifications to devices when they're within a certain range of an iBeacon) and a Proximity Kit API for setting up localized geofences. TUAW reported earlier this week on how retailer Macy's and shopping app Shopkick teamed up to use iBeacon technology in a few flagship stores. With tools like those from Radius Networks making it easier for developers to implement the technology, you can look forward to seeing iBeacons everywhere you go.
Roll your own iBeacon with a Raspberry Pi and a Bluetooth LE dongle (Updated)
Developers who want to start experimenting with iBeacons don't need to wait for hardware to show up on the market or design their own. Radius Networks has published a quick "how-to" for developers that shows how an inexpensive Raspberry Pi and Bluetooth LE dongle can be set up in a few minutes for experimentation purposes. The post, courtesy of James Nebeker and David Young, provides detailed step-by-step command-line instructions on setting up the RPi, downloading the necessary libraries, configuring the Bluetooth dongle and creating the necessary start and stop scripts. And with that, you can start designing the future with Apple's iBeacon technology. Update: Reader Jason Goldsmith tweeted that "You can also use any BT LE iOS device as an iBeacon, so iOS to iOS beacons are possible." That provides another way for developers to test out the Apple technology, although it's not as much fun...
MLB to use iOS 7's iBeacons for customized stadium experiences
Major League Baseball's iOS developer for the MLB app, Marc Abramson, has told Mashable that MLB will be using iOS 7's iBeacons protocol to turn the MLB.com At the Ballpark app into an interactive guide to stadiums. iBeacons are a new Core Location API in iOS 7 that allows any iOS device with a Bluetooth 4.0 chip (BLE) to know where it is in relation to other BLE devices. iBeacons pick up the micro-location of other iBeacon devices, thereby allowing an app on your phone to know where you are on a hyper-local level. Mashable says MLB has been working closely with Apple on iBeacons integration since February. As Mashable reports: By loading the free [MLB.com] app when you get off the subway and head towards the stadium, it immediately knows you are at Citi Field. It populates a ballpark guide with information specific to the stadium, so if you were to enter Phillies' Citizens Bank Park, the entire experience and data wouldn't be the same. As you near the gates, the app displays your ticket's barcode on screen, as well as a map of where the seats are located. If tickets are loaded into Apple Passbook or purchased online through certain ticketing partners, the app will automatically pull them up. An iBeacons-capable MLB app could also show different users different things. For example, a huge baseball fan might see a short video of the history of the stadium on his screen, while just a casual viewer who has only been to the stadium once or twice might see other information, like notifications telling them what kind of food is served in the stadium. At this time there's no word on when the MLB app will be updated with iBeacons support, but it is likely to happen sometime in 2014.
iOS 7 iBeacons: An unsung feature with immense promise
While the world is getting up to speed on iOS 7's more visible features like Control Center and the dazzling parallax effects, there's one feature that hasn't gotten a lot of attention -- iBeacons. TidBITS author Michael Cohen wrote a great piece this week that talks about the feature and what it can do for iOS device owners in the future. iBeacons was just a word on a slide at WWDC 2013, but as Cohen points out, it has the potential to provide some amazing functionality. To quote Cohen, "Apps can use iBeacons to answer the question 'Where am I?' not in terms of a location on a map, like GPS does, but in terms of where the device is relative to another device. Specifically, where it is relative to another device acting as an iBeacon." An iBeacon is a radio that can be placed anywhere, and when an iOS device gets near it, it can estimate how far apart the device and iBeacon are. Any iPhone 4S or later, and any third-generation iPad or later, has the ability to be an iBeacon through the use of Bluetooth 4.0 and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). As Cohen explains it, BLE devices are battery-friendly and can run for weeks without recharging. So how could they be used? Well, a store could set up iBeacons in each department or aisle, so you could use a store directory app and get in-store directions to something you're looking for (are you listening, Home Depot?). Museums could offer tour apps, and Cohen even imagines a future version of Find My iPhone that would work inside a house, finding that iPhone that slipped between couch cushions. Third-party standalone iBeacon devices will start at about US$100 each, and Cohen posits that the price may drop quickly and significantly due to the popularity of iOS. Right now, there's really nothing that takes advantage of iBeacons, but this is a capability of iOS 7 that is just waiting for the right app to come along.
A closer look at iBeacons: Location awareness through Bluetooth LE
One of the many new features coming to iOS 7 that barely got a mention at WWDC is iBeacons. It's Apple's name for Bluetooth Low Energy (also known as Bluetooth Smart), which allows iOS devices to know where they are on a micro-location level. Currently, iOS devices know where they are based on WiFi triangulation or built-in GPS, each of which is an approximation and only accurate to within a few meters. This is good when you're looking for an address, however it's not useful when you're looking for a store in a mall. iBeacons aims to change that by allowing the iPhone to talk to Bluetooth Low Energy locators located inside buildings. AppleInsider has a great feature on how iBeacons can benefit users. The site says: iOS 7's iBeacons can be used by app developers to do things like build an interactive tour of a museum, where the user's attention is directed to specific exhibits as they walk freely within the building. In more general terms, the feature can also be used enable indoor navigation similar to GPS in settings such as an airport or underground subway station where GPS signals aren't available, or specifically to enhance navigational accessibility for the blind or users with other impairments. For those interested in iBeacons or Bluetooth Low Energy, the entire feature is worth a read. And when iBeacons is unveiled in the fall with iOS 7, it is sure to make your iPhone a lot more useful as a navigation tool.
