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Vendors using Estimote beacons will use the SDK to make entirely independent apps available in the App Store. Only the specific apps that you choose to install

by aflinik 13y ago

Vendors using Estimote beacons will use the SDK to make entirely independent apps available in the App Store. Only the specific apps that you choose to install will be able to communicate with particular beacons, so if one starts to annoy you with spammy behaviour you can easily remove it from your phone and forget about it.

solistice 13y ago
Installing yet another app is friction though, and unless that app comes up with some serious punch, I doubt it'll be worth it for a lot of people. I think the physical browser model would work be a lot more convenient.
- aflinik 13y ago
  Some retail companies (let's say barnes&noble) already have mobile apps. All it takes is to add beacon-related features, and their customers won't have to do anything.
  - solistice 13y ago
    Yeah, but individual apps on a screen is the very desktop model that we're increasingly moving away from. You have some special purpose programs (games, tools) on your computer, and most services have moved to the internet. Imagine you had to download a hacker news exe, and a google exe, and a reddit exe, etc. By making customers download individual apps, your product becomes harder to implement/less profitable for stores which do not have an app with broad customer adoption. That makes you miss out on the long tail, which in this case could be considerable. The locationally dependent browsing over in store wifi doesn't have this downside. It could leverage exsisting web technology, which makes the development off these apps a lot easier. It might work like this: 1. You walk into the beacon range. The beacon sends you the url: int.somestore.com/locationx?val=123094&locationy?val=594952&locationz=40389 2. It sends you the connection data for the internal wifi which serves up the stores webapplication. 3. The webapp is shown in the estimote app. 4. Profit.
    - jimiasty 13y ago
      Thanks guys for the discussion, this is Jakub, the co-founder. When it comes to the signal/noise problem it is definately a challenge and we believe that neither App Stores nor Estimote as beacons' infrastructure will allow apps that annoy consumers because it will kill the technology and users will turn off the Bluetooth. Our vision of future interactions is more about context. We believe the cocept of apps you have to download and place as an icon on your screen and then find when you need is wrong. It should work the way that you walk-in to the your home approache fridge with smartphone or Google Glass and wanted order for eggs, you take out your phone and there is a fridge context. You walk-in to the restaurant and there is a context of menu and ordering food. You ate and there is a context of payin the bill, you walk-out and in the exit there is a conxtext of rating the restaurant. So, in our vision future apps will be a set of conditions and actions you write for the venue the same way you do it now for the screen and keyboard. From technology point of view if some popular app like Foursquare integreta with our beacons it could trigger other apps even if they not have our code yet, but there is a context for that.

by aflinik 13y ago

solistice 13y ago

Installing yet another app is friction though, and unless that app comes up with some serious punch, I doubt it'll be worth it for a lot of people. I think the physical browser model would work be a lot more convenient.

aflinik 13y ago
Some retail companies (let's say barnes&noble) already have mobile apps. All it takes is to add beacon-related features, and their customers won't have to do anything.
- solistice 13y ago
  Yeah, but individual apps on a screen is the very desktop model that we're increasingly moving away from. You have some special purpose programs (games, tools) on your computer, and most services have moved to the internet. Imagine you had to download a hacker news exe, and a google exe, and a reddit exe, etc. By making customers download individual apps, your product becomes harder to implement/less profitable for stores which do not have an app with broad customer adoption. That makes you miss out on the long tail, which in this case could be considerable. The locationally dependent browsing over in store wifi doesn't have this downside. It could leverage exsisting web technology, which makes the development off these apps a lot easier. It might work like this: 1. You walk into the beacon range. The beacon sends you the url: int.somestore.com/locationx?val=123094&locationy?val=594952&locationz=40389 2. It sends you the connection data for the internal wifi which serves up the stores webapplication. 3. The webapp is shown in the estimote app. 4. Profit.
  - jimiasty 13y ago
    Thanks guys for the discussion, this is Jakub, the co-founder. When it comes to the signal/noise problem it is definately a challenge and we believe that neither App Stores nor Estimote as beacons' infrastructure will allow apps that annoy consumers because it will kill the technology and users will turn off the Bluetooth. Our vision of future interactions is more about context. We believe the cocept of apps you have to download and place as an icon on your screen and then find when you need is wrong. It should work the way that you walk-in to the your home approache fridge with smartphone or Google Glass and wanted order for eggs, you take out your phone and there is a fridge context. You walk-in to the restaurant and there is a context of menu and ordering food. You ate and there is a context of payin the bill, you walk-out and in the exit there is a conxtext of rating the restaurant. So, in our vision future apps will be a set of conditions and actions you write for the venue the same way you do it now for the screen and keyboard. From technology point of view if some popular app like Foursquare integreta with our beacons it could trigger other apps even if they not have our code yet, but there is a context for that.