Beacon Technologies: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Beacosystem

by Stephen Statler, Anke Audenaert (Contributor), John Coombs (Contributor)

Proximity technology—in particular, Bluetooth beacons—is a major source of business opportunity, and this book provides everything you need to know to architect a solution to capitalize on that opportunity. Learn the key standards—iBeacon, Eddystone, Bluetooth 4.0, and AltBeacon—and how they work with other proximity technologies. Then build your understanding of the proximity framework and how to identify and deploy the best solutions for your own business, institutional, or consulting needs.

Solutions architects of all types—venture capitalists, founders, CEOs, strategists, product managers, CTOs, business developers, and programmers—will learn about the following from reading Beacon Technologies: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Beacosystem:

•The disruptive implications of digital–physical convergence and the new applications it makes possible

•The key standards that solutions developers need to understand to capitalize on the business opportunity of proximity technology

•The new phenomenon of beacon networks, which will be hugely significant in driving strategic decisions and creating wealth

•Other technologies in the proximity ecosystem catalyzed by and complementary to Bluetooth beacons, including visual light communication, magnetic resonance, and RFID

•The Beacosystem framework for analyzing the proximity ecosystem

Steve Statler is a writer, public speaker, and consultant working in the beacon ecosystem. He trains and advises retailers, venue owners, VCs, as well as makers of beacon software and hardware. Previously he was the Senior Director for Strategy and Solutions Management at Qualcomm's Retail Solutions Division, helping to incubate Gimbal, one of the leading Bluetooth beacons on the market. He is also the CEO of Cause Based Solutions, creators of Give the Change, democratizing philanthropy, enabling non-profit supporters to donate the change from charity branded debit cards, and developer of The Good Traveler program.

Contributors:

Anke Audenaert, CEO, Favrit

John Coombs, CEO, Rover Labs

Theresa Mary Gordon, Co-Founder, tapGOconnect

Phil Hendrix, Director, immr

Kris Kolodziej, President, IndoorLBS

Patrick Leddy, CEO, Pulsate

Ben Parker, VP Business Development, AccelerateIT

Mario Proietti, CEO, Location Smart

Ray Rotolo, SVP OOH, Gimbal

Kjartan Slette, COO, Unacast

Jarno Vanto, Partner, Borenius Attorneys LLP

David Young, Chief Engineer, Radius Networks

Foreword by Asif Khan, President LBMA

747 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 16, 2016

About the author

My novel, Gods of Glenhaven, releases June 3, 2025 from Koehler Books. I'm a comedy writer whose writings have appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Points in Case and other magazines. A feature film I wrote and directed, The Breathing Show, was released by Film Threat. A screenplay, Big Time, co-authored with Mouncey Ferguson, is currently under option by Gulfstream Pictures. I live with my wife and two children in the Bay Area.

Reviews

[Bilal · Rating 5 out of 5]

The subtitle is apropos: It is indeed a perfect hitchhiker's guide to the beaconsysteym. A handbook of sorts that touches upon everything on the subject in sufficient detail.

I picked up this book a couple of months back and read all of it quickly. (BLE) beacons are an exciting technology, though I got the feeling that the relatively low barrier to entry---it is also a simple technology---would make it prone to abuse. Then I learnt about Google's decision to stop delivering Nearby Notifications in Android for Eddystone and Physical Web beacons as of December 2018; their reasoning: "[W]e noticed a significant increase in locally irrelevant and spammy notifications that were leading to a poor user experience." However, Android's Proximity Beacons API remains supported and can be used by apps to deliver proximity beacon triggered services through an app.