Near Me is dead, long live iBeacons — at SXSW

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AUSTIN, Texas — Remember the Near Me app craze from a few years ago? At SXSW 2013, Highlight and Banjo were the hot apps of the moment. No one talks about them much anymore and they're certainly not a presence here at SXSW 2015

But there is a presence watching, connecting and ready to provide hyper-local information almost whenever you need it: iBeacons.

See also: Will Apple's iBeacon Change the Way We Shop?

This year, SXSW partnered up with Vancouver, Canada, based Eventbase, a mobile even platform company, to build out what Eventbase co-founder Ben West told me is "the largest beacon deployment ever done at an event." They literally installed over 1,000 beacons, which come in two sizes: a palm-sized $35 AAA battery-powered device and a little blue one only a bit larger than a quarter. These beacons use Bluetooth Low Energy technology to connect with SXSW attendees who have downloaded the SXSW Go app Read more...

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