Really interesting, thanks Scott. Personally I'd love to hear more - will drop you a line off-list, or if you publish anything post MW, please let us know!

Looking at this without any practical experience of developing stuff with it, it seems that there are two important things about this:

1) Although iBeacon itself is OS / device specific, the Bluetooth 4 (BLE) standard is a *standard* which is being supported right across the mobile / hardware industry. Bluetooth is an incredible standard already - I'm sitting here with a wireless mouse, a phone that can talk to either my Mac or a local PC, and own a number of other devices that all come with this baked in. My wife said "Bluetooth is what taxi drivers have in their ears when they're pretending to be cyborgs"… - this stuff is everywhere. 

..and although BLE isn't backwards compatible to previous versions of Bluetooth, it'll emerge in new devices - Android, Nokia, Samsung, Blackberry (~strangled cough~), etc

2) It allows (because it can run for so long on tiny amounts of power) the development of proximity sensing stuff - this from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_low_energy): 

FMP, the Find Me Profile. Allows a button pressed on one device (e.g. a wristwatch) to cause an alert signal to be shown on another device (e.g. a phone). These devices are referred to as the 'Find Me Locator' and 'Find Me Target', respectively[16]
PXP, the Proximity Profile allows one device (the Proximity Monitor) to detect whether another device (the Proximity Reporter) is within a close physical range. Physical proximity can be estimated using the radio receiver's RSSI value, although this does not have absolute calibration of distances. Typically, an alarm may be sounded when the distance between the devices exceeds a set threshold.

..so finally we get the beginnings of good, reliable in-building waypointing - which has been kinda shonky to date, relying on the user to scan / key in stuff rather than allowing more ambient forms of interaction.

If you're into your hardware hacking, btw, I found this BLE Arduino shield which looks interesting… http://redbearlab.com/bleshield/

cheers!

Mike




_____________________________


Mike Ellis 

Thirty8 Digital: a small but perfectly formed digital agency: http://thirty8.co.uk  

* My book: http://heritageweb.co.uk *




On 2 Sep 2013, at 10:00, "Bonewell, Perry" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Thanks for sharing. Interesting the level of granularity this offers, even allowing measurement of visitor responses to individual objects in-gallery.
> 
> Perry
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott Brewer
> Sent: 02 September 2013 07:46
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: More on iBeacon and "the end of NFC"
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> Scott Brewer from Art Processors here, I think this is the first time I've written to the list so hello to all.  Great conversation on BTLE and beacons.  
> 
> For those that aren't aware of Art Processors we created the in house guide, "The O", for Hobart's Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) back in 2010. The focus of The O was on providing location relevant content for visitors, it was launched on and in-house fleet of  devices only due to the needs (at the time) of an external real time location system.  Since launching The O we've been working frantically at creating a simple to use content delivery system for mobile applications and websites which we call the Enso Platform.     
> 
> Backstory over we've been using Bluetooth LE beacons of our own design for a just under a year now to get indoor position for capable devices.  Our first roll out of BTLE beacons was for the State Library of New South Wales "Curio" application (http://curio.sl.nsw.gov.au/  built using and managed by the Library on our Enso platform) back in March and we've been refining the tech since and will be rolling out onsite at MONA in November with the launch of version 2 of the mobile app and website.
> 
> If anyone's interested in elements of bluetooth beacons we would be more than happy to answer your questions, it has been a pretty interesting challenge to incorporate it nicely into our apps, lots of frustrations and lots of eureka moments (and, I imagine, many more to come).  The technology really is quite amazing and, I feel, will offer all kinds of benefits for both visitors and staff (we're using them for data transfer, location and security, we'll be implementing a few more uses of them down the track).  We'll be at Museums and the Web Asia in December if anyone wants to have a look at them and how they work or if anyone has any more interest please feel free to get in touch.  
> 
> You can have a look at our beacons here: http://artprocessors.net/ap-beacons/ 
> 
> Cheers,
> Scott.
> 
> -
> Scott Brewer
> Co-Founder  *  Art Processors Pty Ltd
> [log in to unmask] *  0415 150 156  *  www.artprocessors.net
> 
> Melbourne: 17 Bedford Street, Collingwood, VIC 3066 Australia  *  +61 (0) 3 9419 5416
> Sydney: L3, 85 William Street, Darlinghurst, 2010 NSW Australia  *  +61 (0) 2 8580 5825
> 
> On 30/08/2013, at 10:08 PM, Tony Crockford <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> On 28 Aug 2013, at 11:23, Mike Ellis <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Personally I think this could be huge for in-gallery mobile stuff 
>> 
>> +1 on that.
>> 
>> Our Estimote beacons are on pre-order.
>> :)
>> 
>> However, no matter what the technology, I think the big deal is still about content creation, creating object interpretations, content managing those interpretations and having an interesting story to tell are more important than how the story is delivered.
>> 
>> That's the direction we're approaching it from at least, with the ongoing objective of creating systems that allow for content creation once and delivery many times via a variety of now and future mechanisms.
>> 
>> Seems to me that *beacons* can make those stories more engaging, by having an object call out to passers by.  The fact that they are unaffected by our miserable weather also make them very interesting for large scale outdoor implementations.   (Living museums and sculpture parks, I'm looking at you!)  
>> 
>> A museum trail would now be much more fun!
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