Hasta La Gadget!

This week there’s already been one report of Apple deciding to move forward with at least one larger display size for their iPhone lineup, coming first to the iPhone 6, … Continue reading

Hardware startup Sensorberg just raised $1 million (€750,000) from Berlin Technologie Holding and undisclosed angel investors. Part of the Microsoft Ventures Accelerator in Berlin, Sensorberg is one of the most promising iBeacon startups in Europe. As a reminder, iBeacon is an indoor positioning system developed by Apple to trigger and send relevant information to your smartphone when you are walking inside a shop.

As a retailer, you first have to buy a few Sensorberg Beacon sensors and place them in your store — for $120 (€89), you get 3 sensors. Then, you’ll be able to take advantage of the SDK and dashboard to implement campaigns or location features for your app.

Estimote is a serious competitor in this space. It has been chosen for Best Hardware Startup at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013 and recently raised a $3.1 million seed round.

Beacons work on Bluetooth Low Energy to detect when a customer’s phone is close to a sensor. Sensorberg promises a 10-month battery and a 30 meter range for its devices.

While the devices are pretty similar, the two startups will probably differentiate themselves through their respective SDKs and sales teams. In fact, Estimote beacon sensors work with Sensorberg’s SDK. It is probably too early to tell which company provides the best implementation of iBeacon.

But there are many potential real world use cases, and this is what makes iBeacon interesting. For example, when you enter a clothing shop, you can receive a push notification with all the latest promos. When you enter a coffee shop, you could get the brew of the week on your phone. Or a shopping mall could display a map to help you find the right store. It could power a new payment system as well, essentially a Square Wallet on steroids.

The hard part is to convince big retail chains to use iBeacon. These customers have the potential to develop a good mobile app, get a large user base and integrate iBeacon features. In the U.S., Macy’s is experimenting with iBeacon. Apple will take advantage of its technology as well.

But for now, it remains a novelty. It can go either way and become a massive retail technology or end up like QR codes. Remember QR codes?

Word this afternoon comes from Timothy Arcuri of Cowen and Company that Apple’s next iPhone – tentatively called the “iPhone 6” – will certainly be working with a 4.8-inch display. … Continue reading

This article was written on January 04, 2008 by CyberNet.

One of my favorite events of the year is the Bill Gates Keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). That’s typically where he shows off gadgets that many of us know are like 20+ years away, but it’s cool to watch nonetheless. One such example is the technologically advanced bedroom that Gates demonstrated at CES 2007, which is pictured above.

Bill Gates’ CES 2008 Keynote will take place on Sunday, January 6th at 6:30PM Pacific Time. Like always Microsoft streams the event over the Internet so that those of us unable to attend are still able to watch it live. You need to have Windows Media Player to watch it, and here are the streams sorted with the best quality (a.k.a. most bandwidth intensive) first:

• 750K Stream
• 300K Stream
• 100K Stream

Since we’re still a few days away you can take some time to watch the Bill Gates CES Keynote from last year, which also requires Windows Media Player. The really cool stuff doesn’t come until the end, so skip forward about an hour if you want to jump right in on the gadgets you’ll never be able to afford. 🙂

What do you think we’ll see at the keynote this year? I’m guessing there will definitely be some mention of Vista SP1, Xbox 360, new Zunes, and Windows Home Server. We’ll recap what happened first thing Monday morning.

Thanks for the tip Josh!

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Though most of the MacBooks you’ll see out in the wild today – from the last few years, that is – work without any apparent buttons under their surface, they … Continue reading