7 ms·

New Chrome for iOS scans for beacons broadcasting URLs

49 points by jimiasty 11y ago

jimiasty 11y ago
Estimote founder here. Few days ago Google released their new, open beacon format - eddystone and today just updated Chrome for iOS that can scan for beacons broadcasting Eddystone URLs. You can read more on our blog how to start broadcasting URL using beacons and how to test it on Chrome for iOS.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  I'll ask the uncomfortable question: How conscious are you of how this tech will be abused as a pure advertising medium and how annoying and ugly this potentially will be for users? And how concerned are you by that? Popups were useful once upon a time. OT: the scrolling hijack for the animation in the middle of your site is really annoying.
  - WojtekB 11y ago
    Hey there, Wojtek from Estimote team here: actually, Google is approaching this very conciously when it comes to privacy and UX. You need to opt-in to see those URLs in notification center, then metadata is fetched so you know what you click, and still no tracking is possible until you actually click. Also, they're iterating very fast with Physical Web, but it's still in experimentation phase. Physical Web for Chrome is big news, but keep in mind that Chrome on iOS has ~5% penetration.
tanujparikh 11y ago
Tanuj from the Estimote team here. If you're curious about some of the under-the-hood mechanics between BLE beacons, Eddystone, and the Physical Web check out developer docs http://developer.estimote.com/eddystone/ http://developer.estimote.com/eddystone/
- michaelt 11y ago
  Does the indoor location feature work on time of flight, RSSI or something else? If it's time of flight, how do you convince the OS to give you accurate enough time measurements? The website claims 3 year beacon battery life - but bluetooth has a reputation for poor power performance. How often do the beacons broadcast, for how long, and at what power output?
  - mx12 11y ago
    It works by RSSI [1], and I believe you can calibrate it with your antenna/case design. Not to mention any attenuation by the phone's antenna or your hand/body. Quote: "Phones or other smart devices can pick up the beacon’s signal and estimate the distance by measuring received signal strength (RSSI). The closer you are to the beacon, the stronger the signal. Remember that the beacon is not broadcasting continuously—it’s blinking instead. The more frequent the blinks, the more reliable the signal detection." [1] http://developer.estimote.com/ http://developer.estimote.com/
  - tdicola 11y ago
    Beacons use the newer Bluetooth 4.0/'low energy' specification so they're not like old Bluetooth devices that are constantly connected. It's up to each beacon to decide how often it broadcasts, how powerfully, etc. Check out BLE SoC's like the Nordic nRF51822 for examples of hardware that could turn into a beacon without a ton of work.
  - aflinik 11y ago
    We're doing sensor-fusion trying to use as much data as possible coming from different sources, so besides RSSI from beacons there's also accelerometer, magnetometer, etc. Lots of non-trivial maths to combine that into a robust model, but results are getting more and more incredible. :)
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tdicola 11y ago
This is really nice, will it also be available for Android and if so what Android versions? Right now you have to install Google's physical web app thingy on Android to get beacons so it's kinda clunky and annoying. I know Eddystone was supposed to change a lot of that but I didn't see any mention of what Android versions it will work on. Is it only 5.1 and beyond or are they going to update 4.4, 5.0, etc?
tashoecraft 11y ago
Does chrome put in anything to protect against developers spamming notification center? I can just imagine putting a couple hundred of these throughout time square and making everyone really hate chrome for ios.
- nevi-me 11y ago
  On Android it does, and assuming that it uses the Push Notification API via WebServiceWorker, the user should be able to globally turn the notifications off (as they wouldn't be device-specific).
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    Notifications are application specific, so that would prevent Chrome from prompting notifications completely, not a solution... A better solution is to turn BT off :)
  - heypiotr 11y ago
    We're yet to see how Google implements this on Android. Currently it's iOS only, and the "Today" Chrome widget only, no push notifications at all. Also, see the above comment from jimiasty about Google ranking/filtering the URLs before it shows them in the widget.
- quest88 11y ago
  Beacon's won't be able to spam notifications. That's why they're only broadcasting URLs. If you have the app installed (I can't remember what it is) you'll be able to open it to view nearby beacons. The user has to initiate the search for beacons.
- aflinik 11y ago
  Think of it as of seeing URL printed on the wall (or hidden in QR-code), just easier to use if you actually want to. It's not spamming notification center. Whenever the beacon signal is heard the information about it is shown in Chrome widget, but you still have to manually go there to see it. If you ignore it and move away from the beacon it will simply disappear.
dantiberian 11y ago
One privacy issue I'm seeing is that it seems like the users device still needs to make a request to get the metadata? So the retailer could use fingerprinting of requests to track people around. I wasn't entirely clear on where the metadata comes from so I could have this wrong.
- chrisfosterelli 11y ago
  > information about users won’t be saved until they click a link, so the beacon owner will not know anyone was nearby until they visit the website It sounds like the metadata is sourced from the bluetooth-broadcast, not via a separate request. However, the specification itself[0] only has room for the URL and the telemetry data, so how they achieve this in practice is questionable. [0] https://github.com/google/eddystone/blob/master/protocol-specification.md https://github.com/google/eddystone/blob/master/protocol-spe...
  - shittingbull 11y ago
    Absolute bullshit....
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    The beacons them selves have proximity sensing built in, that at least how the "ibeacons" works... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_low_energy#Proximity_sensing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_low_energy#Proximity...
    - fyolnish 11y ago
      Proximity detection is done by the receiver. An iBeacon is just a dumb broadcaster.
- steckerbrett 11y ago
  Probably easier just to sniff their various MAC addresses.
  - 11y ago
rdancer 11y ago
Because the Bluetooth text spam and Bluetooth image spam was such a raging success!
- aflinik 11y ago
  It's like saying any information printed on paper is useless, because people hate flyers.
RexRollman 11y ago
As a user of Chrome on iOS, I absolutely do not want this. Is there a way to turn this "feature" totally off? I've been looking through the links and didn't see a mention of it.
- jimiasty 11y ago
  This is Jakub, founder of Estimote here. @RexRollman: it seems Google is experimenting with that at the moment and the feature is opt-in only, so no worry. When you download the new Chrome for iOS you "have to" include Chrome into "Today widgets" section and also Enable "Physical Web Scanning" that will show you the list nearby URLs broadcasted by beacons. As you can see there is still a lot of efforts there and you need to turn on initially.
  - RexRollman 11y ago
    Thank you.
lvs 11y ago
Well, this is precisely what no user wants or needs. Slow clap to everyone involved.
- callahad 11y ago
  Are you sure? I'd quite like to walk up to my bus stop and have my phone provide me a link to a stop-specific schedule, among other uses.
  - lvs 11y ago
    But Nextbus already knows what stop you're at using AGPS. What's the point of the beacon? Perhaps you can come up with a use for beacons, but you need to deal with the fact that users don't need or want another intrusive advertising channel.
    - tjohns 11y ago
      What if I don't have Nextbus installed, or have location services disabled? Or even if I have location enabled, what if Nexbus could figure out which stop you're at without having to spin up GPS, in turn saving battery?
      - lvs 11y ago
        Really reaching here. Nextbus is a web app. Location is in my experience always good enough without a sat lock. You don't need "to spin up GPS" to get your answer.
        WojtekB 11y ago
        But Nextbus data is not available everywhere - and installing beacons on bus stops to broadcast URL addresses is fairly easy and low cost.
        lvs 11y ago
        The infrastructure you'd need for your beacons is the same as Nextbus (i.e. trackers on public transport and a city data feed), but Nextbus requires no distributed/deployed devices. Therefore, rolling out a beacon approach must have more overhead than something like Nextbus. You really can't come up with a reason why these beacons are better for that use case. Hell, just put up a QR code at the bus stop. What could be cheaper than that?
rsuelzer 11y ago
One thing I've wanted to do, but is total impractical.. I want to put beacons on trees around the city that will provide information about the tree, for example what type of tree it is, when it was planted, etc. Of course, I could just put little signs on them and it would be available to more people. But it sounds cool.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  There are many cities with tree plaques modern ones have qcode / nfc, some even have a text number so you can donate to "adopt" that tree.
  - bigiain 11y ago
    Hah! another opportunity to use this link: http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/ http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/
- stevesunderland 11y ago
  this is a pretty cool startup idea, mate.
- flgb 11y ago
  Not quite what you are asking for but Melbourne has a digital strategy for their trees and is in the process of rolling out a sensor network also ... http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/Sustainability/UrbanForest/Pages/ExploreUrbanForest.aspx http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/Sustainability/UrbanForest/P...
- RossP 11y ago
  Every tree maintained by the City of Melbourne (Victoria, Australia) has "an email address" (in the mainstream press it's been "one email per tree"; in reality it's a single mailbox the CoM staffers respond to). Click a tree marker on the map near the top of the Melbourne Urban Forest website (http://melbourneurbanforestvisual.com.au/ http://melbourneurbanforestvisual.com.au/) and you can email your selected tree to find further information, etc. A bit more info is in this Broadsheet article: http://www.broadsheet.com.au/melbourne/entertainment/article/trees-return-your-emails http://www.broadsheet.com.au/melbourne/entertainment/article...
dogma1138 11y ago
How many users actually have BT on? I never have it on, and i don't anyone else who has it on unless they pair it with their car, and even then most of them prefer the USB pairing since it charges the phone. Also abusing an already insecure standard and pretty much stitching this onto it doesn't seem like that much of a good idea to me, I wonder what effect all that spam has on actual compliant devices.... The good thing is that it doesn't support URL's that are longer than 18 chars, and only supports 14 top tier TLD's so pretty much USA only. The odd part is that all their examples seem to use shorthand url's provided by goo.gl, but the .gl TLD isn't supported by the standard, eh? who thought this through?
- bradleyland 11y ago
  I leave it on all the time. I don't want to be bothered flipping switches when I want to use a feature. My phone is paired with my car, and I frequently use Airdrop to share photos and videos.
- fowl2 11y ago
  Every iOS user get's Bluetooth turned back on every update...
- tjohns 11y ago
  Honest question: How is Bluetooth insecure? There are some specific insecure devices out there, and Bluetooth has some optional anonymous pairing modes, but my understanding was that the default pairing process provided a reasonable level of security for most applications. Notwithstanding that, I thought Bluetooth LE beacons are broadcast-only, which avoids the pairing issue anyway. And to answer your first question: I leave bluetooth on, both to pair with my car (USB connections don't give enough power to charge with GPS running, and don't provide live audio) and because it's a much lower power way of tethering my other devices to the Internet compared to WiFi tethering. Oh, and my smartwatch uses it too. As does a few other devices at home (BBQ thermometer, conference phone, headphones).
- pilingual 11y ago
  > How many users actually have BT on? I never have it on You are making arguments to support the past. > Also abusing an already insecure standard Bluetooth Smart (i.e. 4.0+/LE) supports AES128 encryption, though that is irrelevant here since we are talking about beacons, which are public. > the .gl TLD isn't supported by the standard, eh? who thought this through? It is supported. If you read the Eddystone documentation carefully, you'll see that the TLD bytes are merely convenient shortcuts. You can encode "thedrop.club" if you want.

49 points by jimiasty 11y ago

Estimote founder here. Few days ago Google released their new, open beacon format - eddystone and today just updated Chrome for iOS that can scan for beacons broadcasting Eddystone URLs. You can read more on our blog how to start broadcasting URL using beacons and how to test it on Chrome for iOS.

scrollaway 11y ago
I'll ask the uncomfortable question: How conscious are you of how this tech will be abused as a pure advertising medium and how annoying and ugly this potentially will be for users? And how concerned are you by that? Popups were useful once upon a time. OT: the scrolling hijack for the animation in the middle of your site is really annoying.
- WojtekB 11y ago
  Hey there, Wojtek from Estimote team here: actually, Google is approaching this very conciously when it comes to privacy and UX. You need to opt-in to see those URLs in notification center, then metadata is fetched so you know what you click, and still no tracking is possible until you actually click. Also, they're iterating very fast with Physical Web, but it's still in experimentation phase. Physical Web for Chrome is big news, but keep in mind that Chrome on iOS has ~5% penetration.

tanujparikh 11y ago

Tanuj from the Estimote team here. If you're curious about some of the under-the-hood mechanics between BLE beacons, Eddystone, and the Physical Web check out developer docs http://developer.estimote.com/eddystone/ http://developer.estimote.com/eddystone/

michaelt 11y ago
Does the indoor location feature work on time of flight, RSSI or something else? If it's time of flight, how do you convince the OS to give you accurate enough time measurements? The website claims 3 year beacon battery life - but bluetooth has a reputation for poor power performance. How often do the beacons broadcast, for how long, and at what power output?
- mx12 11y ago
  It works by RSSI [1], and I believe you can calibrate it with your antenna/case design. Not to mention any attenuation by the phone's antenna or your hand/body. Quote: "Phones or other smart devices can pick up the beacon’s signal and estimate the distance by measuring received signal strength (RSSI). The closer you are to the beacon, the stronger the signal. Remember that the beacon is not broadcasting continuously—it’s blinking instead. The more frequent the blinks, the more reliable the signal detection." [1] http://developer.estimote.com/ http://developer.estimote.com/
- tdicola 11y ago
  Beacons use the newer Bluetooth 4.0/'low energy' specification so they're not like old Bluetooth devices that are constantly connected. It's up to each beacon to decide how often it broadcasts, how powerfully, etc. Check out BLE SoC's like the Nordic nRF51822 for examples of hardware that could turn into a beacon without a ton of work.
- aflinik 11y ago
  We're doing sensor-fusion trying to use as much data as possible coming from different sources, so besides RSSI from beacons there's also accelerometer, magnetometer, etc. Lots of non-trivial maths to combine that into a robust model, but results are getting more and more incredible. :)

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tdicola 11y ago

This is really nice, will it also be available for Android and if so what Android versions? Right now you have to install Google's physical web app thingy on Android to get beacons so it's kinda clunky and annoying. I know Eddystone was supposed to change a lot of that but I didn't see any mention of what Android versions it will work on. Is it only 5.1 and beyond or are they going to update 4.4, 5.0, etc?

tashoecraft 11y ago

Does chrome put in anything to protect against developers spamming notification center? I can just imagine putting a couple hundred of these throughout time square and making everyone really hate chrome for ios.

nevi-me 11y ago
On Android it does, and assuming that it uses the Push Notification API via WebServiceWorker, the user should be able to globally turn the notifications off (as they wouldn't be device-specific).
- dogma1138 11y ago
  Notifications are application specific, so that would prevent Chrome from prompting notifications completely, not a solution... A better solution is to turn BT off :)
- heypiotr 11y ago
  We're yet to see how Google implements this on Android. Currently it's iOS only, and the "Today" Chrome widget only, no push notifications at all. Also, see the above comment from jimiasty about Google ranking/filtering the URLs before it shows them in the widget.
quest88 11y ago
Beacon's won't be able to spam notifications. That's why they're only broadcasting URLs. If you have the app installed (I can't remember what it is) you'll be able to open it to view nearby beacons. The user has to initiate the search for beacons.
aflinik 11y ago
Think of it as of seeing URL printed on the wall (or hidden in QR-code), just easier to use if you actually want to. It's not spamming notification center. Whenever the beacon signal is heard the information about it is shown in Chrome widget, but you still have to manually go there to see it. If you ignore it and move away from the beacon it will simply disappear.

dantiberian 11y ago

One privacy issue I'm seeing is that it seems like the users device still needs to make a request to get the metadata? So the retailer could use fingerprinting of requests to track people around. I wasn't entirely clear on where the metadata comes from so I could have this wrong.

chrisfosterelli 11y ago
> information about users won’t be saved until they click a link, so the beacon owner will not know anyone was nearby until they visit the website It sounds like the metadata is sourced from the bluetooth-broadcast, not via a separate request. However, the specification itself[0] only has room for the URL and the telemetry data, so how they achieve this in practice is questionable. [0] https://github.com/google/eddystone/blob/master/protocol-specification.md https://github.com/google/eddystone/blob/master/protocol-spe...
- shittingbull 11y ago
  Absolute bullshit....
- dogma1138 11y ago
  The beacons them selves have proximity sensing built in, that at least how the "ibeacons" works... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_low_energy#Proximity_sensing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_low_energy#Proximity...
  - fyolnish 11y ago
    Proximity detection is done by the receiver. An iBeacon is just a dumb broadcaster.
steckerbrett 11y ago
Probably easier just to sniff their various MAC addresses.
- 11y ago

rdancer 11y ago

Because the Bluetooth text spam and Bluetooth image spam was such a raging success!

aflinik 11y ago
It's like saying any information printed on paper is useless, because people hate flyers.

RexRollman 11y ago

As a user of Chrome on iOS, I absolutely do not want this. Is there a way to turn this "feature" totally off? I've been looking through the links and didn't see a mention of it.

jimiasty 11y ago
This is Jakub, founder of Estimote here. @RexRollman: it seems Google is experimenting with that at the moment and the feature is opt-in only, so no worry. When you download the new Chrome for iOS you "have to" include Chrome into "Today widgets" section and also Enable "Physical Web Scanning" that will show you the list nearby URLs broadcasted by beacons. As you can see there is still a lot of efforts there and you need to turn on initially.
- RexRollman 11y ago
  Thank you.

lvs 11y ago

Well, this is precisely what no user wants or needs. Slow clap to everyone involved.

callahad 11y ago
Are you sure? I'd quite like to walk up to my bus stop and have my phone provide me a link to a stop-specific schedule, among other uses.
- lvs 11y ago
  But Nextbus already knows what stop you're at using AGPS. What's the point of the beacon? Perhaps you can come up with a use for beacons, but you need to deal with the fact that users don't need or want another intrusive advertising channel.
  - tjohns 11y ago
    What if I don't have Nextbus installed, or have location services disabled? Or even if I have location enabled, what if Nexbus could figure out which stop you're at without having to spin up GPS, in turn saving battery?
    - lvs 11y ago
      Really reaching here. Nextbus is a web app. Location is in my experience always good enough without a sat lock. You don't need "to spin up GPS" to get your answer.
      - WojtekB 11y ago
        But Nextbus data is not available everywhere - and installing beacons on bus stops to broadcast URL addresses is fairly easy and low cost.
        lvs 11y ago
        The infrastructure you'd need for your beacons is the same as Nextbus (i.e. trackers on public transport and a city data feed), but Nextbus requires no distributed/deployed devices. Therefore, rolling out a beacon approach must have more overhead than something like Nextbus. You really can't come up with a reason why these beacons are better for that use case. Hell, just put up a QR code at the bus stop. What could be cheaper than that?

rsuelzer 11y ago

One thing I've wanted to do, but is total impractical.. I want to put beacons on trees around the city that will provide information about the tree, for example what type of tree it is, when it was planted, etc. Of course, I could just put little signs on them and it would be available to more people. But it sounds cool.

dogma1138 11y ago
There are many cities with tree plaques modern ones have qcode / nfc, some even have a text number so you can donate to "adopt" that tree.
- bigiain 11y ago
  Hah! another opportunity to use this link: http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/ http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/
stevesunderland 11y ago
this is a pretty cool startup idea, mate.
flgb 11y ago
Not quite what you are asking for but Melbourne has a digital strategy for their trees and is in the process of rolling out a sensor network also ... http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/Sustainability/UrbanForest/Pages/ExploreUrbanForest.aspx http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/Sustainability/UrbanForest/P...
RossP 11y ago
Every tree maintained by the City of Melbourne (Victoria, Australia) has "an email address" (in the mainstream press it's been "one email per tree"; in reality it's a single mailbox the CoM staffers respond to). Click a tree marker on the map near the top of the Melbourne Urban Forest website (http://melbourneurbanforestvisual.com.au/ http://melbourneurbanforestvisual.com.au/) and you can email your selected tree to find further information, etc. A bit more info is in this Broadsheet article: http://www.broadsheet.com.au/melbourne/entertainment/article/trees-return-your-emails http://www.broadsheet.com.au/melbourne/entertainment/article...

dogma1138 11y ago

How many users actually have BT on? I never have it on, and i don't anyone else who has it on unless they pair it with their car, and even then most of them prefer the USB pairing since it charges the phone. Also abusing an already insecure standard and pretty much stitching this onto it doesn't seem like that much of a good idea to me, I wonder what effect all that spam has on actual compliant devices.... The good thing is that it doesn't support URL's that are longer than 18 chars, and only supports 14 top tier TLD's so pretty much USA only. The odd part is that all their examples seem to use shorthand url's provided by goo.gl, but the .gl TLD isn't supported by the standard, eh? who thought this through?

bradleyland 11y ago
I leave it on all the time. I don't want to be bothered flipping switches when I want to use a feature. My phone is paired with my car, and I frequently use Airdrop to share photos and videos.
fowl2 11y ago
Every iOS user get's Bluetooth turned back on every update...
tjohns 11y ago
Honest question: How is Bluetooth insecure? There are some specific insecure devices out there, and Bluetooth has some optional anonymous pairing modes, but my understanding was that the default pairing process provided a reasonable level of security for most applications. Notwithstanding that, I thought Bluetooth LE beacons are broadcast-only, which avoids the pairing issue anyway. And to answer your first question: I leave bluetooth on, both to pair with my car (USB connections don't give enough power to charge with GPS running, and don't provide live audio) and because it's a much lower power way of tethering my other devices to the Internet compared to WiFi tethering. Oh, and my smartwatch uses it too. As does a few other devices at home (BBQ thermometer, conference phone, headphones).
pilingual 11y ago
> How many users actually have BT on? I never have it on You are making arguments to support the past. > Also abusing an already insecure standard Bluetooth Smart (i.e. 4.0+/LE) supports AES128 encryption, though that is irrelevant here since we are talking about beacons, which are public. > the .gl TLD isn't supported by the standard, eh? who thought this through? It is supported. If you read the Eddystone documentation carefully, you'll see that the TLD bytes are merely convenient shortcuts. You can encode "thedrop.club" if you want.