The beacon life cycle has evolved. That’s right, technology moves fast, and what’s next is uBeacons. Whereas iBeacons speak at you (or more specifically, your phone), uBeacons converse with you. Consider it the Web. 2.0 of beacons.
VentureBeat writer Barry Levine offers a good, informative article on the new development. Here’s a taste:
Unlike standard beacons, Ubudu’s uBeacons — which also support the iBeacon standard — can receive a few kilobits per second of data back from customers’ smartphones without pairing, and they can each talk via Bluetooth to other mesh beacons. If one of the mesh beacons is connected to the Internet, the mesh network can communicate with the cloud.
This means, for instance, that a customer standing in an aisle could send a very brief message via her smartphone app to the store, asking for assistance. Customer phones would need to have Bluetooth 4.0, which is supported by a majority of phones.
uBeacons aren’t relegated to retail; they can be implemented in large venues, too.
“uBeacon Mesh can also power large venues,” Ubudu said in the video below. “In a stadium, you could broadcast a hot dog flash promotion to all fans at once.”
For more information about uBeacons, please read VentureBeat’s article.
(Image: Ubudu)
