Keep in sync with U Washington!

[davclark]

Here's the latest from Bill Howe (via Dan Halperin):

From our discussion yesterday, here are some companies that do beacons.

(Where it was obvious, I provided links to the SDKs/APIs rather than the home pages.)

http://www.smartbeacon.eu/platform-api/
http://estimote.com/api/
http://gimbal.com/

http://buyibeacons.com/

There's some trouble brewing because Apple is being Apple and trying to differentiate and lock down their iBeacon protocol as distinct from the underlying "smart bluetooth" BLE standard.

BLE is "bluetooth low energy," and it doesn't require all the pairing nonsense of the old bluetooth.

We probably want something that works out of the box on both iPhone and Android -- companies appear to be working to make this happen despite Apple's shenanigans.

Estimote is $99 for a starter pack.

[davclark]

I asked how they get buy-in for this kind of thing also...