Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text stuff from dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, and welcome to tech stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: and I'm Lauren Focalam, and today we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about bacon. So bacon is a big thing on the internet.
Speaker 1: Everyone loves bacon. The hipster's love bacon. They're bacon t
Speaker 1: shirts and bacon what Lauren? Beacons? Beacons, stupid typos, beacons
Speaker 1: you know what? Wait wait, wait wait, I know all
Speaker 1: about beacons because I made a prediction about beacons for
Speaker 1: the predictions. So beacon technology. Yeah, you may have heard
Speaker 1: of beacons, especially if you are an iOS seven fan,
Speaker 1: and you might have heard of I beacon, and you
Speaker 1: may wonder what the heck is a beacon? Why? Why
Speaker 1: what are we talking about here? So really to understand that,
Speaker 1: you have to know that beacon is really an implementation. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's not, it's not so much, but rather an application
Speaker 1: of Bluetooth Low Energy exactly. And Bluetooth low Energy is
Speaker 1: part is one of the protocols. It's part of Bluetooth
Speaker 1: four point Oh. So, Bluetooth is a set of standards
Speaker 1: for wireless data transmission. You may have heard about personal
Speaker 1: area networks these little networks that exist within a small region.
Speaker 1: We're talking like within the the range of around fifty
Speaker 1: meters around a hundred sixty four feet that's typically what
Speaker 1: Bluetooth four point oh can reach. Um, these are where
Speaker 1: you can have all these sort of devices talk to
Speaker 1: one another within this region. If they were to leave
Speaker 1: the region, they would no longer be in contact with
Speaker 1: each other. I played some awesome games of Space Team
Speaker 1: over Bluetooth. Seriously Space Team, well, I mean like the
Speaker 1: the I have controllers for video games that work on Bluetooth.
Speaker 1: I've got the Pebble smart watch, which connects by a
Speaker 1: Bluetooth to my smartphone. I have a speaker in one
Speaker 1: of the showers at my house that is a Bluetooth speaker,
Speaker 1: so I can turn on my my Neil Diamond playlist
Speaker 1: when I go and and what oh, that's perfect come
Speaker 1: into America today. I love Bluetooth, so so Beacon. Like
Speaker 1: you said, it's part of a Bluetooth Low Energy or
Speaker 1: also known as Bluetooth Smart. Those are the two interchangeable terms.
Speaker 1: And this is a particular set of protocols that allows
Speaker 1: for low energy Bluetooth transmissions. This is really important because
Speaker 1: Bluetooth traditionally is kind of a battery suck. It really
Speaker 1: drains your battery pretty quickly. Right. But but but this
Speaker 1: uses just small packets of information, so it's not nearly
Speaker 1: as much of a drain. Exactly. It's very efficient. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's and and it's also limited. Right, So you're not
Speaker 1: gonna be streaming Like I talked about that Bluetooth speaker
Speaker 1: that I have in a shower, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: use Bluetooth low energy to stream a song from my
Speaker 1: phone to that speaker because it can't handle that size
Speaker 1: of a data packet. It's it's really just a tiny
Speaker 1: packet can handle a little bit of information. It's Twitter
Speaker 1: instead of Netflix, exactly. Yeah, it's a good, good comparison,
Speaker 1: you know you are. Uh, it's very versatile, but it
Speaker 1: also has its limitations. So this technology, like you said, Lauren,
Speaker 1: it's not new. It was actually developed under the name
Speaker 1: Wybery by a company, little company called Nokia, So Nokia,
Speaker 1: Nokia or Nokia, depending upon how you like to pronounce.
Speaker 1: It started working on this way back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, but it was eventually lumped in in two
Speaker 1: thousand and ten with the Bluetooth standard. So we've had
Speaker 1: this since, but it's just now starting to get some traction.
Speaker 1: You're starting to hear about beacons, especially once uh, Apple
Speaker 1: announced that they were incorporating I beacon, although to be fair,
Speaker 1: Apple was not. They didn't trumpet this. This was not
Speaker 1: like one of their big announcements when they unveiled iOS seven.
Speaker 1: If you looked at one of the keynote slides almost
Speaker 1: at power point, but keynote slides, it was probably weren't
Speaker 1: using power probably not. Uh, it was one of like
Speaker 1: two dozen terms on the on a slide that would
Speaker 1: appeared down towards the lower left hand corner, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't really featured at all. Well, I think that that's
Speaker 1: mostly because not that many um not that many apps
Speaker 1: have have that function built in, or that that not
Speaker 1: that many hardware providers are overall selling beacon technology to
Speaker 1: two places that would be able to use them. Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's only a few examples right now. For example, uh,
Speaker 1: the Apple stores have them now in the Apple stores. Case.
Speaker 1: Here's I guess I should really explain what a beacon does. Technically,
Speaker 1: what a beacon does, It transmits information over this bluetooth
Speaker 1: low energy two devices that can then accept that information.
Speaker 1: It can also act as a receiver. Doesn't have to
Speaker 1: just be a transmitter, can be a transmitter and receiver,
Speaker 1: and in fact, I think most implementations we will see
Speaker 1: will show both transmitter and receiver. Um. So the idea
Speaker 1: being that because it's low energy, you could create a
Speaker 1: standalone device that all it does is beam out whatever
Speaker 1: information you wanted to beam out, and it would be
Speaker 1: accepted by other mobile devices that have Bluetooth technology enabled
Speaker 1: to have some sort of app that as able to
Speaker 1: interpret this information and present it to you. So in
Speaker 1: the case of the Apple stores, it was information about
Speaker 1: like how long the weight was at the Genius Bar,
Speaker 1: so you might walk in and as long as you
Speaker 1: had that app installed on your iPhone and your iPhone
Speaker 1: was running iOS seven, then you would get that information.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like real time updates about the
Speaker 1: environment you are currently in, and and and again. It
Speaker 1: obeys the same range rules of Bluetooth. You know, once
Speaker 1: you get outside of that fifty range, you're not getting
Speaker 1: those those updates anymore. But a whole bunch of devices
Speaker 1: within that range can all receive this information simultaneously. Right,
Speaker 1: and if you have a lot of the beacons in
Speaker 1: a space, you can get different types of information as
Speaker 1: you move through the space. So let's go back to
Speaker 1: the Apple Store, because why not. It's a trendy place.
Speaker 1: So there might be one beacon that's near the Genius
Speaker 1: Bar that gives you an update on how that's going.
Speaker 1: There might be another beacon that's closer to say the
Speaker 1: Mac displays, and you get information on all the newest
Speaker 1: Mac computers. And then there might be another one that's
Speaker 1: over by the iPhone displays. You get information about the
Speaker 1: iPhones as you walk around, So when you get close
Speaker 1: to the iPhone display, information pops up on your phone,
Speaker 1: and it again, it's kind of like it's it's like
Speaker 1: the Internet of Things meets augmented reality in a way,
Speaker 1: because you're getting this digital information about the actual physical
Speaker 1: environment around you. Right, Each beacon has its own little
Speaker 1: I D, and so when your device comes within its
Speaker 1: range um, your device is going to either receive a
Speaker 1: little packet of information directly from the beacon or just
Speaker 1: receive the beacon's I D and then forward it to
Speaker 1: a server which can then give you a lot more information.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, because again that the information the beacon itself
Speaker 1: can end is pretty limited, so there might be some
Speaker 1: tag teaming going on here that would all depend upon
Speaker 1: the app that's on your phone. So this is also
Speaker 1: a good time to remind everyone that when we say
Speaker 1: the beacon is an implementation of of Bluetooth, it's a
Speaker 1: way of saying this is a means of transmitting data wirelessly.
Speaker 1: What happens with that data, how it transfers, what's being
Speaker 1: done with it, that's all dependent upon whatever app you're using.
Speaker 1: So in other words, it's kind of like any app
Speaker 1: that connects to the internet. The Internet allows for the connection,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't determine what actually happens. What what actually
Speaker 1: happens is dependent upon the software of the app itself.
Speaker 1: That's why Twitter does not do the same thing as
Speaker 1: four Square, which doesn't do the same thing as Facebook,
Speaker 1: which doesn't do the same thing is etcetera, etcetera. So
Speaker 1: they all have their own parameters. All right, that's important
Speaker 1: to remember because that's going to come into play in
Speaker 1: the second half of our conversation. So, because you can
Speaker 1: have these devices that don't take up a lot of power,
Speaker 1: you can actually have pretty small form fact years to
Speaker 1: have a little battery and this little transmitter and not
Speaker 1: a whole lot else. There might be a circuit board
Speaker 1: that lets it connect to either another server like you
Speaker 1: were saying, or just to have some other sensor, depending
Speaker 1: upon what you want to use this for. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it could be as small as a as a dongle,
Speaker 1: like a USB dongle. Yeah, so it's it's because it's
Speaker 1: small and it doesn't take up a lot of energy.
Speaker 1: You could directly have a whole bunch of these and
Speaker 1: and dedicate each one to a specific task. Uh. One
Speaker 1: of the examples I like about what you could do
Speaker 1: with this is imagine that you go to Another implementation
Speaker 1: could be a way of navigating around a really big space,
Speaker 1: like say an airport. So anyone who's done a lot
Speaker 1: of traveling, especially if you ever have to go through
Speaker 1: an airport you're not really familiar with and maybe you
Speaker 1: have to make a connection, that can be really stressful.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And I mean it's not like GPS is
Speaker 1: going to work in that kind of situation because the
Speaker 1: I mean, although the airport is very large, GPS isn't
Speaker 1: that specific, right, And especially GPS usually can't penetrate if
Speaker 1: you're inside a building, right, you might if you're not
Speaker 1: close to a window, then you may not be able
Speaker 1: to get a strong enough signal for GPS to even
Speaker 1: tell you really where you are. Right. But if you're
Speaker 1: using this beacon kind of technology, your device is going
Speaker 1: to have its own I D numbers, so so this
Speaker 1: beacon network can send out specific information to it, like,
Speaker 1: for example, how to get to your gate. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: let's say that I land at an airport I've never
Speaker 1: been at, UH and I opened up my app and
Speaker 1: it then connects to this network, this beacon network that's
Speaker 1: inside the airport, and the closest beacon identifies who I
Speaker 1: am through the app. It knows where I'm going because
Speaker 1: the app I'm using has my travel plans in it,
Speaker 1: and then it relays the information to me, saying, all right,
Speaker 1: you need to turn right and go down this way,
Speaker 1: and your your gate is the seventh one on the right,
Speaker 1: and so I know, I just turn right and I go.
Speaker 1: I don't have to worry, I don't freak out and
Speaker 1: have a meltdown in the airport as I am want
Speaker 1: to do. Or could give you coupons for that for
Speaker 1: that food booth. Yes, yeah, maybe maybe I'm rushing by
Speaker 1: Starbucks and then suddenly it says, hey, you want a coffee,
Speaker 1: like yes, yes, I do want a coffee, or or
Speaker 1: it could give you information about the artwork that's that's
Speaker 1: posted up in the halland exactly, and as you get
Speaker 1: closer to your actual gait, it may pull up your
Speaker 1: your electronic boarding paths so that you can just to
Speaker 1: scan and get on the flight so that way. And
Speaker 1: they've even gone so far as to say, what if
Speaker 1: you had one of these so that as you got
Speaker 1: on the flight and you sat down, it reminded you, hey,
Speaker 1: turn off the cellular service on your phone now, because
Speaker 1: now you're on on the plane to do that. So
Speaker 1: you can see where this could be really useful in that,
Speaker 1: you know, again kind of maneuvering through unfamiliar areas or
Speaker 1: taking advantage of things like uh, like, let's say a
Speaker 1: store has a sale that you wouldn't have known about otherwise,
Speaker 1: but because you have this one app on your phone
Speaker 1: and because it enables the connection, as you walk by,
Speaker 1: it says, hey, by the way, uh, you know, shoes
Speaker 1: on sale, and you might think, hey, I need shoes.
Speaker 1: I will go and look at them. And this is
Speaker 1: beneficial to the store owners as well. I mean, because
Speaker 1: you know, if you say, oh, I do need some shoes,
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to buy them before, but now I
Speaker 1: totally will, right, And then the store owner sees through
Speaker 1: data visualization that you have interacted with a display. And
Speaker 1: it's because you know, I think of think of looking
Speaker 1: at screen where each of the beacons is represented on
Speaker 1: the screen in a location in your store. Prehaps it's
Speaker 1: even directly associated with a display, and then it lights
Speaker 1: up every time someone interacts with it. And then if
Speaker 1: you see that on that screen that one section is
Speaker 1: lighting up a lot, you know that that's really popular,
Speaker 1: it's working really well. If another section is hardly ever
Speaker 1: lighting up, you might say, well, what's wrong? Is the
Speaker 1: display not attractive? Is it in just a bad area,
Speaker 1: Like there's just not a lot of foot traffic there?
Speaker 1: What can I do to improve the traffic there and
Speaker 1: and improve sales? Yeah, especially over time, you can create
Speaker 1: a heat map of what your customers are doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's like ground level market research that you can
Speaker 1: do yourself based upon this. Now, Uh, that things up
Speaker 1: the idea that they are watching what people are doing
Speaker 1: and how they're moving through the store, which can give
Speaker 1: someone the hebe and or GBS. As I recall, Lauren,
Speaker 1: you felt that that was a little that was not
Speaker 1: really your bag. Yeah, well it's actually when we were
Speaker 1: talking about it in the Predictions show. What I'm more
Speaker 1: don't want is my phone pinging me about a billion
Speaker 1: different things when I'm in a store, because that's just
Speaker 1: not the store experience that I am personally looking for.
Speaker 1: I can I can see where it would certainly be
Speaker 1: useful to many people. That sounds like I would be
Speaker 1: so irritated so quickly. So, Lauren, are you the kind
Speaker 1: of person this is just not not really to beacons?
Speaker 1: I'm curious to find out. Are you the kind of
Speaker 1: person who when you need to go shopping, you know
Speaker 1: exactly what you want, You go and you get and
Speaker 1: you leave. No, Well, sometimes sometimes I am me because
Speaker 1: that's what I call the dude approach. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: actually probably have the extreme lady approach, wherein I kind
Speaker 1: of know what I want and then I also want
Speaker 1: to look at literally everything else in the store. But
Speaker 1: you want to do it on your terms. Yeah, got it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to guide it to Are I understand?
Speaker 1: I understand entirely. And then see. Here's the thing you
Speaker 1: have to remember is that this involves you installing an
Speaker 1: app on your phone. Uh. And yeah, no one, no
Speaker 1: one is saying that this is going to be enforced, right,
Speaker 1: And this is not like one app. This is this
Speaker 1: is a technology that enables app developers to make their
Speaker 1: own apps. So every store would have to create an
Speaker 1: app in order to interact with you in this. You
Speaker 1: might either have forty different apps on your phone so
Speaker 1: that you can go to the mall and use all this,
Speaker 1: or you might find an app developer that partners with
Speaker 1: lots of different stores to make an over overarching kind
Speaker 1: of experience. Uh. This is all brand new, so it's
Speaker 1: not like brand new in the sense of people actually
Speaker 1: working building these things. So it's not like, um, there's
Speaker 1: a lot to point at right now, right right, And
Speaker 1: you know, people aren't the only thing that that beacons
Speaker 1: can track. You can also use Bailey technology for a
Speaker 1: lot of different stuff. There's there's a particular product called
Speaker 1: drop tag that includes Bailey and a bunch of accelerometer
Speaker 1: type sensors. It's it's made to be included with shipments
Speaker 1: and to report back on whether or not the package
Speaker 1: was in fact handled with care. Yeah. I can imagine
Speaker 1: this being a big deal with say luggage, so people
Speaker 1: can can say like, no, I can demonstrate to you
Speaker 1: that my luggage was not handled properly because look at
Speaker 1: the data. The data don't lae right. Um. You can
Speaker 1: also tags, say equipment in a hospital or something like
Speaker 1: that with receivers instet of a beacon network to track
Speaker 1: the stuff that you need. Yeah. In fact, the health
Speaker 1: care industry is one of the big industries that are
Speaker 1: that's projected to be a huge user of this kind
Speaker 1: of technology. Sure, you could also use it to track
Speaker 1: your employees if they have an I D badge, Although
Speaker 1: that that that actually goes back into the creeping me
Speaker 1: out about tracking behavior kind of notice that you spent
Speaker 1: an average of seven minutes in the break room when
Speaker 1: your break times are supposed to be limited to five minutes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be not so much fun, although certainly in
Speaker 1: some situations it could it could be a boon to
Speaker 1: the business to figure out. Um, for for example, in
Speaker 1: manufacturing or something, if if you need to figure out
Speaker 1: how long a product is spending with different teams of people,
Speaker 1: or could be very us or if it's someone who's
Speaker 1: say like uh, on call, like an I T specialist
Speaker 1: that could for hours. Yeah, yeah, it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that could happen. So uh, you know, we we
Speaker 1: mentioned that GPS doesn't necessarily work very well indoors. That's
Speaker 1: where the speaking technology is really expected to take off
Speaker 1: as an indoor areas, although not exclusively, because there are
Speaker 1: a lot of stadiums that are talking about using this.
Speaker 1: Both football staves, Super Bowl used it, uh, and then
Speaker 1: there are stadiums like baseball stadiums as well that are
Speaker 1: looking to use this kind of technology, but an enclosed
Speaker 1: area at any rate, even if not indoors, right, So
Speaker 1: in this in those cases, it's really meant as a
Speaker 1: way of distributing information quickly to people that want that
Speaker 1: sort of information. So if you're going to a sporting event,
Speaker 1: it might be statistics updated statistics of what's going on
Speaker 1: as you're watching it. But the way that beacons to
Speaker 1: tend to track you to figure out where you are
Speaker 1: if you're inside and there's no GPS, I mean, depending
Speaker 1: upon the app, it could actually ask your phone, what
Speaker 1: are your GPS coordinates right now? But if your if
Speaker 1: your phone can't get GPS coordinates because you have to
Speaker 1: be in the middle of the first flour of the mall, yeah,
Speaker 1: or a concrete bunker filled with beacons as they often are.
Speaker 1: UM what what it tends to use is the received
Speaker 1: signal strength indication or r S s I. This is
Speaker 1: really the strength of the connection between your device and
Speaker 1: the beacon, and as the distance between your device and
Speaker 1: the beacon decreases, the signal strength increases their inversely proportionate
Speaker 1: sure So UM that by by using multiple beacons, you
Speaker 1: can start to estimate where someone is. If if you
Speaker 1: are close to Beacon A, and you're not far away
Speaker 1: from Beacon C, but you're pretty far from beacon B.
Speaker 1: By triangulating that you can kind of guess where the
Speaker 1: person is. Sure And the more beacons that you have
Speaker 1: set up in this kind of situation, the better your
Speaker 1: your accuracy is going to bind up being exactly so
Speaker 1: that way you can start to track a person's movement
Speaker 1: through a physical space, at least with some degree of
Speaker 1: of certainty. It doesn't always work. There have been lots
Speaker 1: of tests where people have walked up to a display
Speaker 1: that has a beacon there, and there's another display nearby
Speaker 1: as a beacon there, and they get the wrong information
Speaker 1: for the for the display they're looking at that does
Speaker 1: see still still happen, but that is the technology improves.
Speaker 1: I think that's going to smooth out a little bit.
Speaker 1: And also I take a while, And it depends again
Speaker 1: on how many beacons you've gotten the area right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the actual physical layout of where you've put these beacons,
Speaker 1: and how how those those borders overlap. You know, you
Speaker 1: don't want too much overlap because then you're just gonna
Speaker 1: get confusing information. But you don't want it to be
Speaker 1: completely separate because then you can't really tell where someone is.
Speaker 1: You just know that they're close by because it's not directional,
Speaker 1: it's just proximity. So that's important to remember too. So
Speaker 1: we've got a lot more to talk about with this,
Speaker 1: including some of the big concerns beyond just hey, they're
Speaker 1: looking at where I'm going in the store. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: some that's yeah, that's I don't I don't know if
Speaker 1: I had like a dude following me around in the
Speaker 1: store the whole time, if I'd be comfortable with that.
Speaker 1: So why would I be comfortable with this? There are
Speaker 1: other concerns as well, and we'll talk about them in
Speaker 1: just a moment. But before we do, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay, so one of
Speaker 1: the things we have to talk about is if you
Speaker 1: have a technology that can at least track your movements. Uh,
Speaker 1: something immediately springs to mind. Besides, that's a little weird.
Speaker 1: It's a little creepy that they see that I'm moving
Speaker 1: through the space. And that's privacy, now, not just the
Speaker 1: fact that you're moving through a space. Because in theory,
Speaker 1: you could have an app that doesn't collect any information
Speaker 1: about you. It just lets the system know that there
Speaker 1: is a person here, but there's no identifying information whatsoever.
Speaker 1: It's just a person who has Bluetooth and a old
Speaker 1: technology that's moving through the space. That is possible, but
Speaker 1: it's not likely. It's more likely that you're going to
Speaker 1: have people design apps they're going to collect at least
Speaker 1: some information from your device, and that information could reveal
Speaker 1: more about you than you might expect. For example, there
Speaker 1: are often a lot of people will say that certain
Speaker 1: information like your gender, your data, birth, and your zip
Speaker 1: code are non identifiable pieces of information, meaning that just
Speaker 1: because you give that over doesn't mean they know who
Speaker 1: you are. Because you know you could be any person
Speaker 1: born on a certain day who lives in a certain
Speaker 1: zip code, except for eight seven of the U S population,
Speaker 1: it totally knows who you are. Yeah, eight seven of
Speaker 1: the time. That is unique information to an individual. So
Speaker 1: there is overwhelming chance that just with those three pieces
Speaker 1: of information, someone who has access to, you know, just
Speaker 1: a list of people who live in that zip code
Speaker 1: would be able to identify, cross link and identify you.
Speaker 1: Share and and note that even if you don't specifically
Speaker 1: give an app that kind of information, if you've, for example,
Speaker 1: linked it to Facebook, the app might have that info
Speaker 1: already right exactly. Any time an app links through some
Speaker 1: other service. Facebook is the greatest example, because it happens
Speaker 1: all the time. Share of Twitter or LinkedIn or or
Speaker 1: any other number of things. Google Plus is another one.
Speaker 1: Yet any of those are it's going to have as
Speaker 1: much information as you have. Granted it. Granted it. And
Speaker 1: now the permissions in the actual app should lay out
Speaker 1: what pieces of information specifically it is grabbing, whether it's
Speaker 1: from Facebook or whatever. Also, the terms of service should
Speaker 1: spell that out, But people tend to write really vague
Speaker 1: terms of service. Yeah. Also, I mean, and that's assuming
Speaker 1: that anyone actually reads the terms of service, which when
Speaker 1: no one does, I mean, everyone just hits I accept
Speaker 1: and then moves on, because who who has time to
Speaker 1: read a forty page dissertation that may not even give
Speaker 1: you any information? It is understandable by human beings. Perhaps
Speaker 1: if we contacted Joe's reptilian friends, we would be able
Speaker 1: to figure this out, but we poor humans can't. So
Speaker 1: if you guys don't listen to too forward thinking, you totally.
Speaker 1: Joe and I go off about reptilian's extensively. It was
Speaker 1: impossible to control that, which honestly I didn't want to.
Speaker 1: You know, reptilians are pretty impossible to control under especially
Speaker 1: the interdimensional line. I found that out as the podcast continued.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you know, you you could potentially end up
Speaker 1: sharing quite a bit of information about yourself depending upon
Speaker 1: the app. Again, this is this is independent of the
Speaker 1: technology itself. That's just the way that the data is
Speaker 1: conveyed from point to point. Sure, and and it's important.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, we're still talking. This is opten technology,
Speaker 1: and no one is forcing anybody to download apps that
Speaker 1: use this. Although I shouldn't mention, I believe if you
Speaker 1: have io iOS seven installed on your iPhone. It automatically
Speaker 1: turns Bluetooth on as default. Yes, but you can turn
Speaker 1: it off, yes you can. And by turning off Bluetooth
Speaker 1: that that also means you've opted out, because Bluetooth is
Speaker 1: how these these things communicate. It's again like kind of
Speaker 1: like WiFi or cellular service. It's just you know, a
Speaker 1: different set of parameters, but the same basic idea. This
Speaker 1: is how that information is traveling. So if you are
Speaker 1: sharing this information, your privacy is at risk. Obviously, your
Speaker 1: privacy could be at risk in multiple ways. It could
Speaker 1: be that the app creator is collecting data and then
Speaker 1: selling it to other parties. So maybe you end up
Speaker 1: on every mailing list that has ever been made for
Speaker 1: every product ever and then you get tons and tons
Speaker 1: of jump mail. Or it could be that, uh, if
Speaker 1: the app developer is storing this information somewhere, if that's
Speaker 1: not secure, someone else could end up hacking into that
Speaker 1: system and getting that information. Yeah, we've seen plenty of examples.
Speaker 1: Even if you don't have anything like a credit card
Speaker 1: number or something, just your personal identification information can enough
Speaker 1: for a hacker to do some serious damage. Like we're
Speaker 1: talking identity theft and things along those lines. So I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, there are a lot of things to be
Speaker 1: aware of before you go into this. Now, it may
Speaker 1: be that you're perfectly fine with that. Maybe you are
Speaker 1: very careful with your information and you feel confident about it,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's not an issue to you at all,
Speaker 1: which is perfectly fine. There's no reason I'm not going
Speaker 1: to tell anyone. You know, there are certain apps that
Speaker 1: I might use that use this technology that because I
Speaker 1: just like the experience of having that app. For example,
Speaker 1: I am a baseball fan. I'm not a statistics fan, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't obsess over statistics, but if I did, I
Speaker 1: could easily see myself wanting to have this so that
Speaker 1: I could get more information, you know, every time player
Speaker 1: steps up to bat and have that statistic updates. So
Speaker 1: it's almost like I have a real time baseball card
Speaker 1: for every player in every every team. That'd be amazing.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, I mean more information overall. I'm certainly not
Speaker 1: going to say it's a bad thing. That's that's lovely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just have to think of what the tradeoff could be.
Speaker 1: So and also, if I'm at the ballpark and I
Speaker 1: find out that for some reason, they're running a special
Speaker 1: on nachos. I definitely want to pounce on that. I
Speaker 1: have such a nacho craving today. I you know I
Speaker 1: do too, I, but I'm not going to go onto that.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's not you your fault that I'm concentrating
Speaker 1: on this. I know I'm ashamed of myself for that one, Lauren.
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna look you in the face because
Speaker 1: I feel terrible, all right, So uh At any rate,
Speaker 1: So again, the app is what this all depends upon.
Speaker 1: So you also have to worry about security, but we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that in a little bit too. But security
Speaker 1: is just another of those issues where anytime you have
Speaker 1: information spreading from one point to another, if you have
Speaker 1: an app that that takes people's information and sends it
Speaker 1: transmits in some way, there are ways to either intercept
Speaker 1: that information or to otherwise corrupt the information. So that's
Speaker 1: also something to think about another kind of this guy
Speaker 1: of technology. Like I said earlier, I personally would not
Speaker 1: want a store shouting at my phone a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff as I walked through it. So I think
Speaker 1: that I think that over stimulation could could be an issue.
Speaker 1: I can understand that there are days when my phone
Speaker 1: notifications go bonkers because of Facebook, of Twitter, of email
Speaker 1: and plants versus zombies too, that I often consider turning
Speaker 1: it off. I don't, but I consider it. You know.
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking of that store that I get like
Speaker 1: one or two emails per day from. And do I
Speaker 1: really want them to give them? Right? Yeah, I do not,
Speaker 1: you know. And you know, granted you could always uninstall
Speaker 1: an app, but at that point they already have all
Speaker 1: that information anyway, so you know, go back to the
Speaker 1: privacy issue. Um. Also, it does require that you have
Speaker 1: Bluetooth on, which is another another resource drain on your device, right,
Speaker 1: so you could end up noticing that your phone battery
Speaker 1: dies faster. This is of those things that actually they mentioned,
Speaker 1: uh the Pebble mentioned when they were unveiling their stuff
Speaker 1: at CS. Someone actually asked, like, does having that Bluetooth
Speaker 1: connection on between the watch and the phone decrease the
Speaker 1: battery life? And and he was very forthcoming. The CEO
Speaker 1: of Pebble said, well, yes, it actually can decrease the
Speaker 1: battery life by up to ten because because Bluetooth is
Speaker 1: a little power hungry. Now the actual transmissions are taking
Speaker 1: very little power, but just maintaining the Bluetooth connection the
Speaker 1: whole time is what's going to start to to put
Speaker 1: a drain on that battery. Certainly. Okay, so you know,
Speaker 1: we we've listed out some of the cons and I
Speaker 1: know it comes across like we're being really cautionary about this,
Speaker 1: but there's some some genuine benefits that I think are
Speaker 1: are exciting about this. For example, you know we've talked
Speaker 1: about NFC technology near field communication where you can have
Speaker 1: a an app on a phone or other device that
Speaker 1: has one of these chips in it and be able
Speaker 1: to buy something just by tapping the phone again some
Speaker 1: receiver at at a vendor, put in a pen, and
Speaker 1: then you make a purchase without having to ever take
Speaker 1: out your credit card. The same thing could happen over
Speaker 1: this beacon technology you're transmitting over Bluetooth instead of over NFC.
Speaker 1: It also has the added benefit that you can make
Speaker 1: that that purchase without having to tap your phone against anything,
Speaker 1: because you know, NFC has a range of a few centimeters,
Speaker 1: but Bluetooth has a range of fifty. Yeah, hypothetically, when
Speaker 1: you walk into the store and an app or even
Speaker 1: a third party thing like like PayPal, PayPal has a
Speaker 1: dongle in development to to sell to merchants for for
Speaker 1: this kind of payment structure where it's completely hands free,
Speaker 1: just just by being in the store. You can put
Speaker 1: merchants on on a list of either pre approved or
Speaker 1: like one click approval kind of yeah, which is cool.
Speaker 1: I mean it's streamlines your your whole process. So I
Speaker 1: mean there's no downside of that, right Well, actually on
Speaker 1: the merchants and um, they might wind up paying higher
Speaker 1: rates to credit card companies depending on what kind of
Speaker 1: agreements they have worked out. All payments through the system
Speaker 1: would count as card not present transactions, which can sometimes
Speaker 1: come with a heavier fee then present, So that could
Speaker 1: be a disincentive for merchants to implement that particular feature.
Speaker 1: So we'll see. But there are other pros we can
Speaker 1: talk about. I mean, obviously, you get more information about
Speaker 1: the environment you are in physically, so that that can
Speaker 1: be really beneficial. Particularly let's say you're walking around a museum.
Speaker 1: You might be getting a lot more information about the
Speaker 1: exhibits that you're looking at, that kind of tour guide
Speaker 1: sort of sort of thing. Yeah, exactly, you might turn
Speaker 1: around the corner and the next thing you know, your
Speaker 1: phone pops up and says Hello, Dolly, and then you're
Speaker 1: looking at a great Salvador Dolly painting. It'd be amazing.
Speaker 1: I like that in your Utopia version of this technology.
Speaker 1: There's still a lot of puns. That's also all of
Speaker 1: my all of my my bluetooth applications would be narrated
Speaker 1: by Carol Channing. So that's just that's a requirement I have.
Speaker 1: You would also be able to navigate more easily. Like
Speaker 1: we said with the airport example, you'd able to, you know,
Speaker 1: use these beacons to guide people. That would be really
Speaker 1: useful if you happen to have a building that uh
Speaker 1: that you know, visitors are allowed in certain areas but
Speaker 1: not others, and make it a lot easier than having,
Speaker 1: you know, a whole bunch of different security points and stuff.
Speaker 1: Now that you would get rid of security points, but
Speaker 1: you might not have to have as many. Actually, what
Speaker 1: I sort of thought of when we were when I
Speaker 1: was reading through all of these notes about this technology
Speaker 1: is that it would it would change the face of
Speaker 1: of horror survival games because you would never have to
Speaker 1: jangle a door handle and have it tell you that
Speaker 1: that that the law is broken. You just know, right
Speaker 1: you you walk toward in the phone would just say buster. Nope, yeah,
Speaker 1: you just turn I had to turn around. Um not
Speaker 1: the not the Bluetooth is probably gonna work in a
Speaker 1: in a hell dimension like most Yeah anyway, Um, but
Speaker 1: this stuff would be hypothetically more stable than a Wi
Speaker 1: Fi or cellular connection. Yeah yeah, I mean as long
Speaker 1: as you are within that range, it should be working
Speaker 1: pretty well. And you know, anyone who's familiar with Wi
Speaker 1: Fi and cellular issues knows that those that's not always
Speaker 1: the case. One of the other interesting things is that
Speaker 1: you just need Bluetooth on whatever the devices in order
Speaker 1: to interact with this technology. So you need the Bluetooth
Speaker 1: and whatever the app is, but it doesn't need to
Speaker 1: have WiFi or cellular capability. It could just be Bluetooth
Speaker 1: because that's the protocol being used. So you could have
Speaker 1: an old cell phone that you haven't used as long
Speaker 1: as it's able to run Bluetooth four point oh. Um.
Speaker 1: When I say old cell phone, I mean from this
Speaker 1: point forward old cell phone, because I think you have
Speaker 1: to have Android four point three or an iOS seven
Speaker 1: device in order to run it, but you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to have a cellular contract. Yeah, you just you would
Speaker 1: just have to have a device that can run this
Speaker 1: this protocol, and then you could use that as your
Speaker 1: device to interact with everything. So if you didn't want
Speaker 1: to load it down on your main phone, you just
Speaker 1: want to have this other gadget that gets bombarded with stuff,
Speaker 1: then you totally could do that, um, which I think
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. Also you could I can see this
Speaker 1: as a system that if you build the right app,
Speaker 1: you could interact with other people in your environment. By that,
Speaker 1: I mean Apple's implementation of this is called iBeacon, and
Speaker 1: technically any iOS seven device becomes an iBeacon, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be a little standalone you know thing
Speaker 1: that's on a wall or on a shelf. It's actually
Speaker 1: on your phone or tablet or whatever. So a network
Speaker 1: of people can become a network of information. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can even have a flash networks right. Everyone who shows
Speaker 1: up who has this suddenly becomes part of this network.
Speaker 1: If you have the right kind of app. You know,
Speaker 1: you would have to design the app to do this.
Speaker 1: I could see this working in some place like south
Speaker 1: By Southwest, for example, becoming like a networking thing where
Speaker 1: even if you wanted to, you can make it where
Speaker 1: it's like an electronic business card exchange kind of deal,
Speaker 1: or if you want to do in a more social setting,
Speaker 1: it could be for a dating kind of thing. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: you have to be really careful with that because privacy concerns. Right.
Speaker 1: You might want to find out if the person across
Speaker 1: the room is also interested in Monty Python movies, but
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily want to give all of your contact
Speaker 1: information upon that first exchange. These are there's certain social
Speaker 1: situations we want to go through first. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a pecking order. Uh, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: want I don't want to accidentally hit the I love you,
Speaker 1: here's all of my information button. But you know, the
Speaker 1: biggest pro I think of all of this is that
Speaker 1: it is opt in and that that any app that
Speaker 1: you're using is you know, hopefully going to have these
Speaker 1: kind of rules and protections, and just like if you're
Speaker 1: going to be making a purchase, it's going to have encryption,
Speaker 1: it's going to require that you put a pen in
Speaker 1: there or some other form of security measure so that
Speaker 1: people can't take advantage of that. You know that that's
Speaker 1: really important and I think I think we've learned that
Speaker 1: lesson using other forms of data transmission. So my hope
Speaker 1: is that any app developer from this point moving forward
Speaker 1: keeps that in mind while developing apps, including and really
Speaker 1: anything where you're going to be exchanging information actively with
Speaker 1: a group of people or or a vendor or whatever.
Speaker 1: So but because it's opt in means that you don't
Speaker 1: have to do it if you don't want to. If
Speaker 1: you if you want to, if you want to, take
Speaker 1: a weight and see approach and make sure that this
Speaker 1: is not gonna end up being some sort of nightmare
Speaker 1: down the road. There's nothing wrong with that. You can
Speaker 1: completely be cautious if you if it doesn't interest in
Speaker 1: you you at all, you can stay out of it. Um,
Speaker 1: that's nice. So I agree that's the biggest pro that
Speaker 1: it's not forcing you to do it. Although uh, if
Speaker 1: you do have an iOS seven device, remember to turn
Speaker 1: the Bluetooth off because you've been opted in already, so
Speaker 1: technically that's opt out. But still it's opt which is good,
Speaker 1: not compulsory, and any opt is I'll take. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: prefer opt in, but give us at least opt out
Speaker 1: at the very least. All right, Well, that wraps up
Speaker 1: this discussion about beacon technology. I hope you guys found
Speaker 1: it interesting. Maybe you now agree with my prediction that
Speaker 1: it's going to be a huge thing this year. I
Speaker 1: will be shocked to find out otherwise, unless there's just
Speaker 1: some catastrophic, uh bad experience that ends up making everyone say, oh,
Speaker 1: that was a bad idea. Let's go back to chatting
Speaker 1: through interpretive dance and that's all all right. So if
Speaker 1: you guys have any suggestions for future topics we can
Speaker 1: cover here on text stuff, let us know. Send us
Speaker 1: an email or I just is tech stuff at Discovery
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Speaker 1: Stuff hs W and Lauren and I will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon for more on this and thousands
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