Tag: ibeacons

  • Zuli’s Smartplugs turns your phone into a proximity-based switch in your home

    Darrell Etherington reports for TechCrunch on Zuli’s Smartplugs that turn your phone into a proximity-based switch for your home appliances. Zuli’s Smartplugs can detect when you walk into or out of a room, and trigger customized actions based on what you want them to do in either case. That means you could have your computer,…

  • What can you do with iBeacons in your home?

    Mike Elgan shares what he envision the home would be like with iBeacon. Scanning the vast, emerging innovations for low-cost, mobile-controlled home automation (much of it on crowd-funding sites like Kickstarter at present), it’s pretty clear that the home of the near future (3-5 years) will operate something like this: As you pull into the…

  • How Apple can deploy iBeacons rapidly

    Matthew Panzarino reports for TechCrunch about how Apple could have 250 million iBeacon units by 2014. Specifically, most of the coverage of iBeacons so far has failed to recognize a very important reality of this system: every iOS device since the iPhone 4s and iPad 3rd gen is already capable of being either an iBeacon…

  • Apple stores activate iBeacons to push micro-location information to our device

    Associated Press reports that Apple stores are now using iBeacons to provide precise location information as you walk around different parts of the store. On Friday, Apple Inc. began using the technology at its 254 U.S. stores to send you messages about products, events and other information — tailored to where you are inside, provided…

  • Elgato Smart Key tracks your car and keys

    With Bluetooth low energy (BLE) appearing in an incresing number of devices, it’s not surprising to see devices being developed to take advantage of the technology. Similar to competitor Tile, the Elgato smart key aims to help you solve the common problem of forgotten car keys, or finding your car in a large parking lot.…

  • iBeacons used to provide location-based access to iOS Newsstand publications

    Darrell Etherington writes for TechCrunch about the use of iBeacons to deliver location-based access to iOS Newsstand publications. The tech is very handy in a number of scenarios, as in a coffee shop for instance, where the establishment could subscribe and enable access to full magazines to patrons who come in. It’s made even more…