Like a Beacon

the predictions. So beacon technology. Yeah, you may have heard of beacons, especially if you are an iOS seven fan, and you might have heard of I beacon, and you may wonder what the heck is a beacon? Why? Why what are we talking about here? So really to understand that, you have to know that beacon is really an implementation. Okay, it's not, it's not so much, but rather an application of Bluetooth Low Energy exactly. And Bluetooth low Energy is

part is one of the protocols. It's part of Bluetooth four point Oh. So, Bluetooth is a set of standards for wireless data transmission. You may have heard about personal area networks these little networks that exist within a small region. We're talking like within the the range of around fifty meters around a hundred sixty four feet that's typically what Bluetooth four point oh can reach. Um, these are where you can have all these sort of devices talk to

one another within this region. If they were to leave the region, they would no longer be in contact with each other. I played some awesome games of Space Team over Bluetooth. Seriously Space Team, well, I mean like the the I have controllers for video games that work on Bluetooth. I've got the Pebble smart watch, which connects by a

Bluetooth to my smartphone. I have a speaker in one of the showers at my house that is a Bluetooth speaker, so I can turn on my my Neil Diamond playlist when I go and and what oh, that's perfect come into America today. I love Bluetooth, so so Beacon. Like you said, it's part of a Bluetooth Low Energy or also known as Bluetooth Smart. Those are the two interchangeable terms. And this is a particular set of protocols that allows

for low energy Bluetooth transmissions. This is really important because Bluetooth traditionally is kind of a battery suck. It really drains your battery pretty quickly. Right. But but but this uses just small packets of information, so it's not nearly as much of a drain. Exactly. It's very efficient. Uh,

it's and and it's also limited. Right, So you're not gonna be streaming Like I talked about that Bluetooth speaker that I have in a shower, I'm not going to use Bluetooth low energy to stream a song from my phone to that speaker because it can't handle that size of a data packet. It's it's really just a tiny packet can handle a little bit of information. It's Twitter instead of Netflix, exactly. Yeah, it's a good, good comparison, you know you are. Uh, it's very versatile, but it

also has its limitations. So this technology, like you said, Lauren, it's not new. It was actually developed under the name Wybery by a company, little company called Nokia, So Nokia, Nokia or Nokia, depending upon how you like to pronounce. It started working on this way back in two thousand and six, but it was eventually lumped in in two thousand and ten with the Bluetooth standard. So we've had this since, but it's just now starting to get some traction.

You're starting to hear about beacons, especially once uh, Apple announced that they were incorporating I beacon, although to be fair, Apple was not. They didn't trumpet this. This was not like one of their big announcements when they unveiled iOS seven. If you looked at one of the keynote slides almost at power point, but keynote slides, it was probably weren't

using power probably not. Uh, it was one of like two dozen terms on the on a slide that would appeared down towards the lower left hand corner, and it wasn't really featured at all. Well, I think that that's mostly because not that many um not that many apps have have that function built in, or that that not that many hardware providers are overall selling beacon technology to two places that would be able to use them. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, there's only a few examples right now. For example, uh,

the Apple stores have them now in the Apple stores. Case. Here's I guess I should really explain what a beacon does. Technically, what a beacon does, It transmits information over this bluetooth low energy two devices that can then accept that information. It can also act as a receiver. Doesn't have to just be a transmitter, can be a transmitter and receiver, and in fact, I think most implementations we will see

will show both transmitter and receiver. Um. So the idea being that because it's low energy, you could create a standalone device that all it does is beam out whatever information you wanted to beam out, and it would be accepted by other mobile devices that have Bluetooth technology enabled to have some sort of app that as able to

interpret this information and present it to you. So in the case of the Apple stores, it was information about like how long the weight was at the Genius Bar, so you might walk in and as long as you had that app installed on your iPhone and your iPhone was running iOS seven, then you would get that information. So it's kind of like real time updates about the environment you are currently in, and and and again. It

obeys the same range rules of Bluetooth. You know, once you get outside of that fifty range, you're not getting those those updates anymore. But a whole bunch of devices within that range can all receive this information simultaneously. Right, and if you have a lot of the beacons in a space, you can get different types of information as you move through the space. So let's go back to the Apple Store, because why not. It's a trendy place.

So there might be one beacon that's near the Genius Bar that gives you an update on how that's going. There might be another beacon that's closer to say the Mac displays, and you get information on all the newest Mac computers. And then there might be another one that's

over by the iPhone displays. You get information about the iPhones as you walk around, So when you get close to the iPhone display, information pops up on your phone, and it again, it's kind of like it's it's like the Internet of Things meets augmented reality in a way, because you're getting this digital information about the actual physical

environment around you. Right, Each beacon has its own little I D, and so when your device comes within its range um, your device is going to either receive a little packet of information directly from the beacon or just receive the beacon's I D and then forward it to a server which can then give you a lot more information. Right exactly, because again that the information the beacon itself can end is pretty limited, so there might be some tag teaming going on here that would all depend upon

the app that's on your phone. So this is also a good time to remind everyone that when we say the beacon is an implementation of of Bluetooth, it's a way of saying this is a means of transmitting data wirelessly. What happens with that data, how it transfers, what's being done with it, that's all dependent upon whatever app you're using. So in other words, it's kind of like any app that connects to the internet. The Internet allows for the connection,

but it doesn't determine what actually happens. What what actually happens is dependent upon the software of the app itself. That's why Twitter does not do the same thing as four Square, which doesn't do the same thing as Facebook, which doesn't do the same thing is etcetera, etcetera. So they all have their own parameters. All right, that's important to remember because that's going to come into play in

the second half of our conversation. So, because you can have these devices that don't take up a lot of power, you can actually have pretty small form fact years to have a little battery and this little transmitter and not a whole lot else. There might be a circuit board that lets it connect to either another server like you were saying, or just to have some other sensor, depending upon what you want to use this for. Yeah, but it could be as small as a as a dongle,

like a USB dongle. Yeah, so it's it's because it's small and it doesn't take up a lot of energy. You could directly have a whole bunch of these and and dedicate each one to a specific task. Uh. One of the examples I like about what you could do with this is imagine that you go to Another implementation could be a way of navigating around a really big space,

like say an airport. So anyone who's done a lot of traveling, especially if you ever have to go through an airport you're not really familiar with and maybe you have to make a connection, that can be really stressful.

Oh yeah, And I mean it's not like GPS is going to work in that kind of situation because the I mean, although the airport is very large, GPS isn't that specific, right, And especially GPS usually can't penetrate if you're inside a building, right, you might if you're not close to a window, then you may not be able to get a strong enough signal for GPS to even

tell you really where you are. Right. But if you're using this beacon kind of technology, your device is going to have its own I D numbers, so so this beacon network can send out specific information to it, like, for example, how to get to your gate. Yeah. So let's say that I land at an airport I've never been at, UH and I opened up my app and it then connects to this network, this beacon network that's inside the airport, and the closest beacon identifies who I

am through the app. It knows where I'm going because the app I'm using has my travel plans in it, and then it relays the information to me, saying, all right, you need to turn right and go down this way, and your your gate is the seventh one on the right, and so I know, I just turn right and I go. I don't have to worry, I don't freak out and have a meltdown in the airport as I am want to do. Or could give you coupons for that for

that food booth. Yes, yeah, maybe maybe I'm rushing by Starbucks and then suddenly it says, hey, you want a coffee, like yes, yes, I do want a coffee, or or it could give you information about the artwork that's that's posted up in the halland exactly, and as you get closer to your actual gait, it may pull up your your electronic boarding paths so that you can just to

scan and get on the flight so that way. And they've even gone so far as to say, what if you had one of these so that as you got on the flight and you sat down, it reminded you, hey, turn off the cellular service on your phone now, because

now you're on on the plane to do that. So you can see where this could be really useful in that, you know, again kind of maneuvering through unfamiliar areas or taking advantage of things like uh, like, let's say a store has a sale that you wouldn't have known about otherwise, but because you have this one app on your phone and because it enables the connection, as you walk by, it says, hey, by the way, uh, you know, shoes on sale, and you might think, hey, I need shoes.

I will go and look at them. And this is beneficial to the store owners as well. I mean, because you know, if you say, oh, I do need some shoes, I wasn't going to buy them before, but now I totally will, right, And then the store owner sees through data visualization that you have interacted with a display. And it's because you know, I think of think of looking at screen where each of the beacons is represented on

the screen in a location in your store. Prehaps it's even directly associated with a display, and then it lights up every time someone interacts with it. And then if you see that on that screen that one section is lighting up a lot, you know that that's really popular, it's working really well. If another section is hardly ever lighting up, you might say, well, what's wrong? Is the display not attractive? Is it in just a bad area, Like there's just not a lot of foot traffic there?

What can I do to improve the traffic there and and improve sales? Yeah, especially over time, you can create a heat map of what your customers are doing. Yeah, it's it's like ground level market research that you can do yourself based upon this. Now, Uh, that things up the idea that they are watching what people are doing and how they're moving through the store, which can give someone the hebe and or GBS. As I recall, Lauren, you felt that that was a little that was not

really your bag. Yeah, well it's actually when we were talking about it in the Predictions show. What I'm more don't want is my phone pinging me about a billion different things when I'm in a store, because that's just not the store experience that I am personally looking for. I can I can see where it would certainly be useful to many people. That sounds like I would be so irritated so quickly. So, Lauren, are you the kind of person this is just not not really to beacons?

I'm curious to find out. Are you the kind of person who when you need to go shopping, you know exactly what you want, You go and you get and you leave. No, Well, sometimes sometimes I am me because that's what I call the dude approach. I'm like, I actually probably have the extreme lady approach, wherein I kind of know what I want and then I also want to look at literally everything else in the store. But you want to do it on your terms. Yeah, got it.

I don't want to guide it to Are I understand? I understand entirely. And then see. Here's the thing you have to remember is that this involves you installing an app on your phone. Uh. And yeah, no one, no one is saying that this is going to be enforced, right, And this is not like one app. This is this is a technology that enables app developers to make their own apps. So every store would have to create an

app in order to interact with you in this. You might either have forty different apps on your phone so that you can go to the mall and use all this, or you might find an app developer that partners with lots of different stores to make an over overarching kind of experience. Uh. This is all brand new, so it's not like brand new in the sense of people actually

working building these things. So it's not like, um, there's a lot to point at right now, right right, And you know, people aren't the only thing that that beacons can track. You can also use Bailey technology for a lot of different stuff. There's there's a particular product called drop tag that includes Bailey and a bunch of accelerometer type sensors. It's it's made to be included with shipments and to report back on whether or not the package

was in fact handled with care. Yeah. I can imagine this being a big deal with say luggage, so people can can say like, no, I can demonstrate to you that my luggage was not handled properly because look at the data. The data don't lae right. Um. You can also tags, say equipment in a hospital or something like that with receivers instet of a beacon network to track

the stuff that you need. Yeah. In fact, the health care industry is one of the big industries that are that's projected to be a huge user of this kind of technology. Sure, you could also use it to track your employees if they have an I D badge, Although that that that actually goes back into the creeping me out about tracking behavior kind of notice that you spent an average of seven minutes in the break room when

your break times are supposed to be limited to five minutes. Yeah, that would be not so much fun, although certainly in some situations it could it could be a boon to the business to figure out. Um, for for example, in manufacturing or something, if if you need to figure out how long a product is spending with different teams of people, or could be very us or if it's someone who's say like uh, on call, like an I T specialist that could for hours. Yeah, yeah, it's one of those

things that could happen. So uh, you know, we we mentioned that GPS doesn't necessarily work very well indoors. That's where the speaking technology is really expected to take off as an indoor areas, although not exclusively, because there are a lot of stadiums that are talking about using this.

Both football staves, Super Bowl used it, uh, and then there are stadiums like baseball stadiums as well that are looking to use this kind of technology, but an enclosed area at any rate, even if not indoors, right, So in this in those cases, it's really meant as a way of distributing information quickly to people that want that sort of information. So if you're going to a sporting event, it might be statistics updated statistics of what's going on

as you're watching it. But the way that beacons to tend to track you to figure out where you are if you're inside and there's no GPS, I mean, depending upon the app, it could actually ask your phone, what are your GPS coordinates right now? But if your if your phone can't get GPS coordinates because you have to be in the middle of the first flour of the mall, yeah, or a concrete bunker filled with beacons as they often are.

UM what what it tends to use is the received signal strength indication or r S s I. This is really the strength of the connection between your device and the beacon, and as the distance between your device and the beacon decreases, the signal strength increases their inversely proportionate sure So UM that by by using multiple beacons, you

can start to estimate where someone is. If if you are close to Beacon A, and you're not far away from Beacon C, but you're pretty far from beacon B. By triangulating that you can kind of guess where the person is. Sure And the more beacons that you have set up in this kind of situation, the better your your accuracy is going to bind up being exactly so that way you can start to track a person's movement through a physical space, at least with some degree of

of certainty. It doesn't always work. There have been lots of tests where people have walked up to a display that has a beacon there, and there's another display nearby as a beacon there, and they get the wrong information for the for the display they're looking at that does see still still happen, but that is the technology improves. I think that's going to smooth out a little bit.

And also I take a while, And it depends again on how many beacons you've gotten the area right, Yeah, the actual physical layout of where you've put these beacons, and how how those those borders overlap. You know, you don't want too much overlap because then you're just gonna get confusing information. But you don't want it to be completely separate because then you can't really tell where someone is. You just know that they're close by because it's not directional,

it's just proximity. So that's important to remember too. So we've got a lot more to talk about with this, including some of the big concerns beyond just hey, they're looking at where I'm going in the store. Uh, there's some that's yeah, that's I don't I don't know if I had like a dude following me around in the store the whole time, if I'd be comfortable with that. So why would I be comfortable with this? There are other concerns as well, and we'll talk about them in

just a moment. But before we do, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay, so one of the things we have to talk about is if you have a technology that can at least track your movements. Uh, something immediately springs to mind. Besides, that's a little weird. It's a little creepy that they see that I'm moving through the space. And that's privacy, now, not just the fact that you're moving through a space. Because in theory, you could have an app that doesn't collect any information

about you. It just lets the system know that there is a person here, but there's no identifying information whatsoever. It's just a person who has Bluetooth and a old technology that's moving through the space. That is possible, but it's not likely. It's more likely that you're going to have people design apps they're going to collect at least some information from your device, and that information could reveal

more about you than you might expect. For example, there are often a lot of people will say that certain information like your gender, your data, birth, and your zip code are non identifiable pieces of information, meaning that just because you give that over doesn't mean they know who you are. Because you know you could be any person born on a certain day who lives in a certain zip code, except for eight seven of the U S population, it totally knows who you are. Yeah, eight seven of

the time. That is unique information to an individual. So there is overwhelming chance that just with those three pieces of information, someone who has access to, you know, just a list of people who live in that zip code would be able to identify, cross link and identify you. Share and and note that even if you don't specifically give an app that kind of information, if you've, for example, linked it to Facebook, the app might have that info

already right exactly. Any time an app links through some other service. Facebook is the greatest example, because it happens all the time. Share of Twitter or LinkedIn or or any other number of things. Google Plus is another one. Yet any of those are it's going to have as much information as you have. Granted it. Granted it. And now the permissions in the actual app should lay out what pieces of information specifically it is grabbing, whether it's

from Facebook or whatever. Also, the terms of service should spell that out, But people tend to write really vague terms of service. Yeah. Also, I mean, and that's assuming that anyone actually reads the terms of service, which when no one does, I mean, everyone just hits I accept and then moves on, because who who has time to read a forty page dissertation that may not even give

you any information? It is understandable by human beings. Perhaps if we contacted Joe's reptilian friends, we would be able to figure this out, but we poor humans can't. So if you guys don't listen to too forward thinking, you totally. Joe and I go off about reptilian's extensively. It was impossible to control that, which honestly I didn't want to. You know, reptilians are pretty impossible to control under especially the interdimensional line. I found that out as the podcast continued.

So yeah, you know, you you could potentially end up sharing quite a bit of information about yourself depending upon the app. Again, this is this is independent of the technology itself. That's just the way that the data is conveyed from point to point. Sure, and and it's important. I mean, I mean, we're still talking. This is opten technology, and no one is forcing anybody to download apps that use this. Although I shouldn't mention, I believe if you

have io iOS seven installed on your iPhone. It automatically turns Bluetooth on as default. Yes, but you can turn it off, yes you can. And by turning off Bluetooth that that also means you've opted out, because Bluetooth is how these these things communicate. It's again like kind of like WiFi or cellular service. It's just you know, a different set of parameters, but the same basic idea. This is how that information is traveling. So if you are

sharing this information, your privacy is at risk. Obviously, your privacy could be at risk in multiple ways. It could be that the app creator is collecting data and then selling it to other parties. So maybe you end up on every mailing list that has ever been made for every product ever and then you get tons and tons of jump mail. Or it could be that, uh, if the app developer is storing this information somewhere, if that's not secure, someone else could end up hacking into that

system and getting that information. Yeah, we've seen plenty of examples. Even if you don't have anything like a credit card number or something, just your personal identification information can enough for a hacker to do some serious damage. Like we're talking identity theft and things along those lines. So I mean, you know, there are a lot of things to be aware of before you go into this. Now, it may

be that you're perfectly fine with that. Maybe you are very careful with your information and you feel confident about it, or maybe it's not an issue to you at all, which is perfectly fine. There's no reason I'm not going to tell anyone. You know, there are certain apps that I might use that use this technology that because I just like the experience of having that app. For example,

I am a baseball fan. I'm not a statistics fan, Like, I don't obsess over statistics, but if I did, I could easily see myself wanting to have this so that I could get more information, you know, every time player steps up to bat and have that statistic updates. So it's almost like I have a real time baseball card for every player in every every team. That'd be amazing. Oh sure, I mean more information overall. I'm certainly not

going to say it's a bad thing. That's that's lovely. Yeah, you just have to think of what the tradeoff could be. So and also, if I'm at the ballpark and I find out that for some reason, they're running a special on nachos. I definitely want to pounce on that. I have such a nacho craving today. I you know I do too, I, but I'm not going to go onto that. It's it's it's not you your fault that I'm concentrating on this. I know I'm ashamed of myself for that one, Lauren.

I'm not even gonna look you in the face because I feel terrible, all right, So uh At any rate, So again, the app is what this all depends upon. So you also have to worry about security, but we'll talk about that in a little bit too. But security is just another of those issues where anytime you have information spreading from one point to another, if you have an app that that takes people's information and sends it transmits in some way, there are ways to either intercept

that information or to otherwise corrupt the information. So that's also something to think about another kind of this guy of technology. Like I said earlier, I personally would not want a store shouting at my phone a whole bunch of stuff as I walked through it. So I think that I think that over stimulation could could be an issue.

I can understand that there are days when my phone notifications go bonkers because of Facebook, of Twitter, of email and plants versus zombies too, that I often consider turning it off. I don't, but I consider it. You know. I'm just thinking of that store that I get like one or two emails per day from. And do I really want them to give them? Right? Yeah, I do not,

you know. And you know, granted you could always uninstall an app, but at that point they already have all that information anyway, so you know, go back to the privacy issue. Um. Also, it does require that you have Bluetooth on, which is another another resource drain on your device, right, so you could end up noticing that your phone battery dies faster. This is of those things that actually they mentioned, uh the Pebble mentioned when they were unveiling their stuff

at CS. Someone actually asked, like, does having that Bluetooth connection on between the watch and the phone decrease the battery life? And and he was very forthcoming. The CEO of Pebble said, well, yes, it actually can decrease the battery life by up to ten because because Bluetooth is a little power hungry. Now the actual transmissions are taking very little power, but just maintaining the Bluetooth connection the whole time is what's going to start to to put

a drain on that battery. Certainly. Okay, so you know, we we've listed out some of the cons and I know it comes across like we're being really cautionary about this, but there's some some genuine benefits that I think are

are exciting about this. For example, you know we've talked about NFC technology near field communication where you can have a an app on a phone or other device that has one of these chips in it and be able to buy something just by tapping the phone again some receiver at at a vendor, put in a pen, and then you make a purchase without having to ever take out your credit card. The same thing could happen over this beacon technology you're transmitting over Bluetooth instead of over NFC.

It also has the added benefit that you can make that that purchase without having to tap your phone against anything, because you know, NFC has a range of a few centimeters, but Bluetooth has a range of fifty. Yeah, hypothetically, when you walk into the store and an app or even a third party thing like like PayPal, PayPal has a dongle in development to to sell to merchants for for this kind of payment structure where it's completely hands free,

just just by being in the store. You can put merchants on on a list of either pre approved or like one click approval kind of yeah, which is cool. I mean it's streamlines your your whole process. So I mean there's no downside of that, right Well, actually on the merchants and um, they might wind up paying higher rates to credit card companies depending on what kind of

agreements they have worked out. All payments through the system would count as card not present transactions, which can sometimes come with a heavier fee then present, So that could be a disincentive for merchants to implement that particular feature. So we'll see. But there are other pros we can talk about. I mean, obviously, you get more information about the environment you are in physically, so that that can be really beneficial. Particularly let's say you're walking around a museum.

You might be getting a lot more information about the exhibits that you're looking at, that kind of tour guide sort of sort of thing. Yeah, exactly, you might turn around the corner and the next thing you know, your phone pops up and says Hello, Dolly, and then you're looking at a great Salvador Dolly painting. It'd be amazing. I like that in your Utopia version of this technology. There's still a lot of puns. That's also all of my all of my my bluetooth applications would be narrated

by Carol Channing. So that's just that's a requirement I have. You would also be able to navigate more easily. Like we said with the airport example, you'd able to, you know, use these beacons to guide people. That would be really useful if you happen to have a building that uh that you know, visitors are allowed in certain areas but not others, and make it a lot easier than having, you know, a whole bunch of different security points and stuff. Now that you would get rid of security points, but

you might not have to have as many. Actually, what I sort of thought of when we were when I was reading through all of these notes about this technology is that it would it would change the face of of horror survival games because you would never have to jangle a door handle and have it tell you that that that the law is broken. You just know, right you you walk toward in the phone would just say buster. Nope, yeah,

you just turn I had to turn around. Um not the not the Bluetooth is probably gonna work in a in a hell dimension like most Yeah anyway, Um, but this stuff would be hypothetically more stable than a Wi Fi or cellular connection. Yeah yeah, I mean as long as you are within that range, it should be working pretty well. And you know, anyone who's familiar with Wi Fi and cellular issues knows that those that's not always

the case. One of the other interesting things is that you just need Bluetooth on whatever the devices in order to interact with this technology. So you need the Bluetooth and whatever the app is, but it doesn't need to have WiFi or cellular capability. It could just be Bluetooth because that's the protocol being used. So you could have an old cell phone that you haven't used as long

as it's able to run Bluetooth four point oh. Um. When I say old cell phone, I mean from this point forward old cell phone, because I think you have to have Android four point three or an iOS seven device in order to run it, but you wouldn't have to have a cellular contract. Yeah, you just you would just have to have a device that can run this this protocol, and then you could use that as your

device to interact with everything. So if you didn't want to load it down on your main phone, you just want to have this other gadget that gets bombarded with stuff, then you totally could do that, um, which I think is pretty cool. Also you could I can see this as a system that if you build the right app,

you could interact with other people in your environment. By that, I mean Apple's implementation of this is called iBeacon, and technically any iOS seven device becomes an iBeacon, so it doesn't have to be a little standalone you know thing that's on a wall or on a shelf. It's actually on your phone or tablet or whatever. So a network of people can become a network of information. Yeah, you

can even have a flash networks right. Everyone who shows up who has this suddenly becomes part of this network. If you have the right kind of app. You know, you would have to design the app to do this. I could see this working in some place like south By Southwest, for example, becoming like a networking thing where even if you wanted to, you can make it where it's like an electronic business card exchange kind of deal, or if you want to do in a more social setting,

it could be for a dating kind of thing. Um. Again, you have to be really careful with that because privacy concerns. Right. You might want to find out if the person across the room is also interested in Monty Python movies, but you don't necessarily want to give all of your contact information upon that first exchange. These are there's certain social situations we want to go through first. You know, there's

a there's a pecking order. Uh, I don't I don't want I don't want to accidentally hit the I love you,

here's all of my information button. But you know, the biggest pro I think of all of this is that it is opt in and that that any app that you're using is you know, hopefully going to have these kind of rules and protections, and just like if you're going to be making a purchase, it's going to have encryption, it's going to require that you put a pen in there or some other form of security measure so that

people can't take advantage of that. You know that that's really important and I think I think we've learned that lesson using other forms of data transmission. So my hope is that any app developer from this point moving forward keeps that in mind while developing apps, including and really anything where you're going to be exchanging information actively with a group of people or or a vendor or whatever. So but because it's opt in means that you don't

have to do it if you don't want to. If you if you want to, if you want to, take a weight and see approach and make sure that this is not gonna end up being some sort of nightmare down the road. There's nothing wrong with that. You can completely be cautious if you if it doesn't interest in you you at all, you can stay out of it. Um, that's nice. So I agree that's the biggest pro that

it's not forcing you to do it. Although uh, if you do have an iOS seven device, remember to turn the Bluetooth off because you've been opted in already, so technically that's opt out. But still it's opt which is good, not compulsory, and any opt is I'll take. Yeah, we prefer opt in, but give us at least opt out at the very least. All right, Well, that wraps up this discussion about beacon technology. I hope you guys found it interesting. Maybe you now agree with my prediction that

it's going to be a huge thing this year. I will be shocked to find out otherwise, unless there's just some catastrophic, uh bad experience that ends up making everyone say, oh, that was a bad idea. Let's go back to chatting through interpretive dance and that's all all right. So if you guys have any suggestions for future topics we can cover here on text stuff, let us know. Send us an email or I just is tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter

or Tumbler. You can find us with the handled text Stuff hs W and Lauren and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics because it has stuff works dot Com