Indoor Mapping via WiFi from Google Maps

Those of you with Android phones are getting an update for the Maps application bringing it to version 6.0. With this comes the ability for it to provide your location inside of a building – at least in those few locations that have been mapped by the Google team. Currently these venues are a few airports and shopping malls, like the ginormous 500 store Mall of America. Their announcement comes just after Black Friday, the most shopped time of the year & a little late to make a dent, but interesting nonetheless.

To find your location inside of a building, the Google Maps application uses the WiFi access points that span malls and airport halls, using radio waves to determine the floor and spot that you are approximately in front of. It will not have the specificity that GPS does, as WiFi signals were not designed originally for this type of use, but will give you the general area where you can find yourself. Since GPS signals do not penetrate the roof of buildings, WiFi is a good fall-back technology.

Google Maps before on the left, and with interior capabilities on the right

We at NeuAer use these WiFi signals, along with Bluetooth and Near Field (NFC) to trigger events within our Proximity Platform. We don’t necessarily know where you are, as we do not have the corresponding physical space map that Google does, nor do we care to know where you are. Developers using our proximity platform use those same radio waves that Google uses for maps to trigger things within their software or even up to the cloud.

Knowing where you are in a building is one thing. Having your phone act upon where you are in a building is what we at NeuAer believe is paramount to making your smart phone truly smart. This is partially because going to stores like IKEA are the bane of our existence, so much that we like to traverse their stores backwards – from the exit to the front.

Here’s an example video on how Google aims to make that trip to find your particleboard furniture a little bit easier. IKEA and Google indoor maps

If you want to try it out on your on Android phone, here are the current launch locations which support the indoor map data: Mall of America, IKEA, The Home Depot, select Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, Daimaru, Takashimaya and Mitsukoshi locations and more. Airports like the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Chicago O’Hare (ORD), San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and Narita International (NRT) in Japan.

So try it out and let us know if you can find the bathrooms any easier. You can find us at the “You Are Here” sticker on the analog map!

Here is the original story from the Google Blog.


On a more somber note, our best wishes go out to the family of Charles Walton, the inventor of RFID or Radio Frequency ID tags, who passed away on November 6th. These wireless reader-powered ID chips are a precursor to NFC (Near Field Communication) tags that we use as yet another trigger our NeuAer API.
The story on his passing from Venturebeat.com

Sharing some Mobile Love in Germany

Today marks the day that we were supposed to be landing in sunny California, relaxing and reconnecting with friends and the rest of the team; talking about the adventure we have had on our European road show. We had great meetings, met some amazing people and will have some announcements on projects that we are going to be working on once all the legal stuff gets sorted out! More to come on that front.

This was a great trip socially too as the Black Eyed Peas played a rain delayed show in New York, London had a weekend music celebration, where it rained for only one day of it! Even Paris began their summer with a solstice music celebration with bands on nearly every street corner.

Whilst (which is fancy Brit speak for while in the US) in London we were lucky enough to be introduced to an advisor to the MLOVE conference www.mlove.com/mlove2011/ and submitted our gem showcase application ToothTag into the running for the startup competition. Would you guess we got accepted to present? Well, we did, and this means that we are staying another week in Berlin for new meetings and then head to the conference in the 100 room 19th century castle!

So are you going to be one of the "knights in the castle" at Mobile Love 2011? If so, we'd love to chat with you and see what you are up to!

Join us on our 2011 World ToothTag Tour!

We just left San Francisco and are headed across the country, then onto the world for a NeuAer road show with our Proximity Platform, and we want to meet you!

Our voyage began in San Francisco with the Apple World Wide Developers conference, known to the 5,200 developers in attendance as WWDC. Steve Jobs looked thin when he took the stage as the audience rose in applause, but his keynote excited us with talk of a few of the 1,500 new iOS APIs. These are the software controls that applications like ours get access to on the iPhone and iPad. We cannot wait to get under the proverbial development hood and see which ones of them will give us the same user experience that we have with ToothTag on the Android platform today. While version 5 of Apple’s mobile operating system goes live in the fall, we are looking to see what magic we can make happen with ToothTag today!

Our favorite of these announcements is the “geofence” built into their Reminders application, which allows you to setup a pop-up reminder “when I arrive” or “when I leave” an area. This will be enabled through the iPhone maps application and sends a pop-up a message on-screen to remind you to do an action. So called “geofences” have been around on web portals for mobile phone companies for years, but this is the first time that it has the potential to hit the mainstream. This is a pre-cursor to what we are doing at NeuAer, so we are excited for more people to have visibility into our space! For those newbies to our company, our platform allows triggers not just around geo, or location, but also for people, places and things. It’s not just pop-ups either, but music, maps and actions on the phone as well as the automatic execution of web-based events like social media check-ins as well. Plus, we work inside buildings where geofencing typically works best outdoors.

After a day of meetings with old and new friends at WWDC, we are off to New York for Internet Week, which is like no other conference we have been to. It is scattered across the vast blocks of Manhattan and is a smattering of office open houses, sessions in performance halls and of course the obligatory rooftop cocktail hours. We are excited to get in front of some of our favorite Silicon Alley companies like foursquare, boxee and even some new companies with mixed case names like ours!

Next up is Tel Aviv where we will be sharing ToothTag with old and new friends; some of which we caught up with on Summit at Sea and at the Kinnernet conferences in Israel and Washington DC. Tel Aviv reminds us of San Francisco with cool architecture, a tight knit technology community and tons of innovation! Plus we cannot wait for the “tiny” salad bowls at lunch!

We round out the trip in London and Paris where we are meeting with partners in the communications space and would love to see other innovative companies!

So if you or your team are in any of these amazing cities through the end of June, let us know by sending an email to partners @ neuaer.com, or click on the contact form on our website. We will be in New York for Internet Week, Tel Aviv from the 13th through 17th, London and Paris on the 18th through 23rd. We’d love to chat about making your smartphone projects truly smart with the Proximity Platform from NeuAer!

While the sales and executive team is on the road, we want to thank some of the pictured crew back at home for making ToothTag the amazing product that it is today. Here’s to you guys and gals, and we will be sure to bring back some more great projects for the platform!

NFC + ToothTag = Open Coolness at Google IO

Asia gets all of the cool stuff first like tiny laptops (we called them netbooks - they were cool before tablets became vogue) and mobile broadband. Even QR codes that could launch websites with camera phones, as typing URLs with their alphabet on 10-key numeric phones was a pain. Now the hot thing is Near Field Communications (nicknamed NFC because geeks need acronyms) for commerce or information about stores. We think NFC is neat, but much bigger than retail - so we figured it was time to make them cool.

In America, as I write this, the Nexus S from Samsung has the necessary hardware to read NFC tags. The user experience is really boring though. You don't need to launch an app like you do to read QR codes, just touch a NFC tag, and see content from the tag. For us at Team NeuAer, that wasn't cool enough. We wanted to actually DO THINGS based upon our phones sensing a tag, just as we automate actions from WiFi and Bluetooth. Plus, we wanted to more than just basic things within the phone like play a song, but to also hook into web API's like check-in on foursquare. We thought about even grander ideas like setting triggering your lighting and playing music in your house. While we are not going to provide you the home automation system, we are going to let you hook into yours! We are opening our proximity platform around ToothTag. With Android at Home announced today, it seems that we weren't the only one thinking about automating your environment.

This marks the first time that our ToothTag engine for proximity plumbing is available for developers to create their own web services that can be executed based upon your smartphone seeing another wireless radio. You can write your own apps in your favorite language, or use our examples built in Ruby on Rails or Python and can host them at Heroku or Google App Engine online. Both of these are FREE services (you can thank us later) for you to get started immediately. ToothTag will act as a gateway to trigger your own services based upon seeing any wireless technology that the phone can. All automatically.

At the Google IO conference in 2011 we are also giving away thousands of ToothTag stickers with NFC chips inside; for you use to build your own actions to automate your life. Of course you can perform our default actions, but better yet, we want you to write your own. Because we want to give you the tools to create the next generation of automated actions to make your smartphone truly smart.

We're excited to see what you come up with! So hit the proximityplatform.com link below and show us what you've got!

P.S. Once you scan a few NFC tags, you'll get some interesting names; vs the pseudo-random bytes that identify a tag by default. We figured those tag numbers were boring and came up with our own naming convention. Let us know what we did to come up with this schema, via the comments.

Links:
m.toothtag.net - Our download landing page embedded on the NFC tags for Google IO hosted by our friends at www.getsharesquare.com"
Here is www.proximityplatform.com - Our developer page for YOU to make web apps that run inside of ToothTag

And if you need a NFC capable Android device, Best Buy just put the latest version of the 4G Nexus S up for $149 too!

How to meet 1000 people in a weekend

Some 999 odd lucky others and I spent last weekend together on a cruise ship that left the port of Miami, and had no idea where it was going. You see, it was the journey that we were there for, not the destination. We went to network and listen to speakers like Richard Branson interviewed by Chris Sacca, Russell Simmons, Gary Veynerchuk and Tim Ferriss. These names were our hook to come, and they were good, but what turned out to be better was being in the company of the most amazing A-type scrappy entrepreneurs from around the world. This all took place on an invite only event called Summit at Sea, produced by the team at summitseries.com on Twitter @summitseries & hashtag #SASea. I was lucky to have several friends from prior conferences like Kinnernet on the boat, and even luckier to have my two best friends invited too, on coincidentally what I call my best birthday. Ever.

Before getting into my story, I must thank the team of Jeff, Elliott, Ron, Brett, Jeremy, Josh and all the other staff who made sure we were hydrated, stimulated and engaged on our three day tour. They spent untold man and woman hours converting a stuffy cruise ship into a conference and concert hall, dance club and platform to bring innovators together like no other conference I have attended. They achieved the transformation with flying colors and glow sticks. Even the staff on the ship were blown away by our energy and enthusiasm.

This venue was perfect for me - you see, I love networking. I live for telling and hearing stories from entrepreneurs. As a lifetime technology guy, I started going to computer club meetings before I could drive myself to them and have always been into the human connections around technology. Anything to make connecting better or faster is right up my alley. Oh, and thanks for the rides to the computer club so long ago mom and dad!

Back to the matter at hand. Meeting a thousand people, even within the contained hull of a 12 story ship turns out to be impossible even for an extravert like me. There are just too many interesting people to meet and even miss-matched conversations, activities and cat-naps taking precious time out of the day and night. Since the networking went on throughout the night, the mantra "I'll sleep when I'm dead" became crucial to maximize connections.

So how could we optimize this? All attendees were given a Poken which is simply a hand shaped, USB charged and synced plastic gadget that you can high-five with another same to exchange device IDs with someone else. These IDs are mapped to online user profiles, so when you plug yours into your computer, a website will match your collected IDs to human identities. However, two days into the event they started glowing yellow then red on the last day on the ship. Was the battery dying? I thought so, but no. We were coming up against the limit of just 64 identities being able to be stored within the device.

Worse yet, it was hard to see the green acknowledgment light in the sunlight of the Caribbean, so several connections that I made during the day turned into ghosts in the machine. My real issue was the lack of a real-time referral engine within the device. As a "connector" I frequently bring like minded individuals together. As I mentioned miss-matched connections above, those who did not relate to my likes and interests, were frequently people whom I would like to connect to my friends who share their interests. There was no way to do this on the Poken, a gadget that is no more than an infrared code exchanger.

As we were at sea, with limited (read: costly) Internet connectivity, the offline nature of the conference was both a positive and negative. We were thankfully forced to interact with one another face to face versus use our "digital adult pacifiers" aka smartphones. There was an intranet on the boat with information on the attendees, but our Poken was not attached to this for real-time info. If you wanted to look people up, you had to do so manually on your own accord. There was no "who is relevant to me nearby" that I dreamed of.

So the problem lies there. Even if you could get around and talk to 999 other people, you could only hold a fraction of them in your electronically augmented memory bank then had to remember whom you wanted to connect to your friends and colleagues. What we needed was an online or offline, forwarding capable device with a filtering mechanism for matching like-minded individuals. Simple?

Well, it's not as hard as you think it would be with the use of our proximity platform. The solution goes like this; Identities of the attendee smartphones wirelessly broadcast their IDs, much like the Poken, but at a range that would be readable by people that you could see within a room. Metal walls of a ship would likely block these signals between walls and floors. This means that the "filter" of people in attendance to a guest speaker would be a first level of like mindedness among attendees.

These IDs would too be matched back to identities via the intranet or Internet, but thanks to the screen of a smartphone, and the intelligence of a back-end database with filtering done at a further level. You could find people who match your interests and chose whom you wish to speak to in an effort to be more efficient with your time. You could also forward connections to those who are not a "match" to your friends who are. An artificial intelligence layer on your mobile phone could sift through hundreds of people in a room effortlessly and give you the dozen or two that you could benefit from meeting. Now I do not envision this as a replacement for human connections and serendipity, as I made some amazing connections with people who are not in my domain expertise, but as they say time is money. With what became a "way too short weekend" we could never meet all 1000 great people on the cruise.

So there is a quick productization of the ultimate human connector and time saver. This has been attempted with GPS satellite geo fencing, RFID "radio tags" and QR codes; but our platform enables your everyday Android and iPhone to achieve this type of proximity connectivity with just our intelligent engine inside a room. Without new hardware or a clear view of the sky.

So what do you think? Are you ready for the future of human connections at your next conference?

SXSW Wrap up - We are coming for an Interactive award in 2012!

As I write this we are at 32,000 feet headed from Austin to the West Coast. This year's SXSW Interactive show brought us new friends, new collaborations and a lot of great visibility! We are most excited about partnering with other developers and device manufacturers to bring you even cooler products and services to automate your digital life. Announcements to come on that front!

We started SXSW with a ToothTag demo at the Team Android challenge via Androidandme.com sponsored by Appolicious to hundreds of people in an outdoor patio. Even our buddy Robert Scoble was in attendance showing his love for the platform. A huge thanks goes out to our buddy Matthias Galaca of ShareSquare who helped mange the onslought of questions from excited developers and users!

The Los Angeles based gang at My Location Scouts had us on their web cast and were as excited about what we are up to! Look for a pending video here: http://www.youtube.com/user/mylocationscouts

At the SXSW Next Stage the team from Watchitoo had us on their live web cast that ran on the SXSW.com trade show page. Even better was that our lead-in was the guys from Funny or Die. They were cracking us up taking Tweets from the audience for topics of skits to perform! http://sxsw.com/interactive/trade_show

The #SamsungSXSW blogger lounge hosts invited us to talk on stage with our friends Tom Conrad of Pandora Radio, and Damien Basile @db from Addieu. The three of us investigated intelligence from the cloud and accessing it via mobile devices - two of our favorite things!

Here's what some people are saying about us in the press:
Right before SXSW, at the DEMO Conference, Google's Don Dodge said "It's a platform for connecting all kinds of devices, phones, cars and appliances and letting you know when they're in proximity to you." Network World - Meet Google's human search engine for innovation.

On the Huffington Post Steve Rosembaum said "If you want to see into the future, take a look at ToothTag." http://t.co/CnQnk1Z We predicted correctly that statement brought us joy!

Finally, our G4TV buddy Chris Hardwick @nerdist and nerdist.com MC'd the SXSW Interactive awards on Tuesday eve, the last day of the Interactive show. Not only did he crack us up with his sharp as a razor blade humor, we were inspired more than ever to come back next year to land a prize for ourselves. It's amazing what technology has done to grow this conference from an anti-social overly-geeky "wearable tech clothing" event in the late 1990's to "IRL connections from social sites" of today. Rest assured, we have some killer ideas for what will make this conference even more interactive and "automagic" than it has ever been before!

Now it's back to our comfy beds and back to work. Developing the best platform to allow mobile developers the ability to easily integrate proximity into their apps. We will see you in Austin for 2012, but until then, here's to some more cool stuff now!

Meet us in Austin for SXSW 2011!

Every year in the middle of March, students pack their bags and head to warmer climates. For those in the tech circles, SXSW Interactive draws thousands of social media and Internet affectionados from around the world to Austin Texas, for what I call "geek spring break."

Team NeuAer got to Austin Sunday night and was honored to be a presenter at the Team Android Choice Awards. This event is all about showcasing the best and most innovative Android apps at SXSW. We shared the stage with hometown Austin favorite Gowalla and our own favorite app, Spark. Android has a unique feature over the iPhone called active wallpaper. Typically this is a "live" fish tank or interactive based upon weather, like snow accumulating on the screen when it is snowing. Their unique take on it is a full news, sports and weather screen that integrates with your mobile desktop. Reminds us of Pointcast, a favorite of the 1998 Internet days!

There is a lot to see and many people to meet at SXSW, and we'd love to meet you as well! Reach out to us on our social media connections like @NeuAer or @ToothTag and lets connect in Texas! We will never turn down a BBQ or Shiner request!

Off we go with a Best Technology win at Launch 2011!

We would like to give a big thanks to Jason Calacanis and his Grand Jury at Launch.is for providing NeuAer with an awesome venue to launch our ProxPlatform and the first application built to our API, ToothTag.

We are working feverishly to ensure that our ProxPlatform is compatible with the myriad of software and hardware versions of Android, and in the near future, iOS devices. Stay tuned for our forthcoming ProxPlatform API launch. In the mean time, we are working with a dozen other developers to make sure we have anticipated other apps technology needs for the first proximity platform. Once these apps are ready, we will open the API for all to write to! If you want consideration into a test platform, please email developer at neuaer.com!

Download the App ToothTag for Android here: ToothTag in the Android Marketplace

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/neuaer and keep up to date with the application http://twitter.com/toothtag as well!