Google I/O kicks off tomorrow morning at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View California, for attendees badge pickup begins today and I’ve arrived onsite to complete the process early. I’ve just been greeted by a prompt to open a webpage from a physical device – it’s a feature launched in February in Chrome for Android 49.
It’s not new, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it and it’s going to be a feature at this years Google I/O with the ‘Nearby’ session scheduled for the first day of Google I/O. It basically can prompt you to do things including open a webpage or it could be used to get you to open things, prompt you about a sale in a store, launch an app or a ton of other applications.
The Nearby function is using physical Beacons like the open ‘Eddystone’ beacons Google launched last year, which can use a combination of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and ultrasound.
So, anyway, Eddystone, or at least Beacons are cool – and they’re at I/O and we hope to see more of them. I thought it was neat to get a prompt to use the physical web as I hadn’t come across it previously. First you get a prompt that a physical webpage is available, then an explanation and a permissions prompt the first time you use it, then you actually get a link to the app/webpage etc. cool.
Hoping to get a lot more information about Eddystone, beacons and Nearby while we’re here at Google I/O this year. Stay tuned.
Have you used Beacons?
