We are inspired by our NewAer developers! (AKA You.)

We are a week away from the Techcrunch 2013 Disrupt Hackathon where we are sponsoring a $2k prize for the best developers that use our proximity SDK.  If you are considering using GPS location based service APIs, we'd like for you to take a look at our platform which consumes less power and is more accurate than GPS inside of a space, as high-resolution peer to peer discovery of devices.

Here's some info on the Disrupt Hackathon: techcrunch.com/2013/04/19/disrupt-nys-hackathon-api-workshops-to-feature-aws-box-evernote-facebook-foursquare-and-the-nyt/

At the recent LAUNCH Hackathon, where we debuted our SDK, team NewAer was on hand to help developers who used the platform and also get some great feedback from those using it.  We have made and deployed subtle improvements over the past few weeks, but for Disrupt, we are adding some significant features that we are excited to pre-announce.

Here's a list of what's new on NewAer:

New Features for Android:

• Cell Tower Scanning, set rules when you get or leave a tower (1000's of feet away)
• WiFi Bonjour Scanning, allows you to see Bonjour devices (on the local network)
• New Application Key Callback API, allows you to handle app key check failure gracefully
• New Group API, allows you to easily group devices and rules (for clustering of signals)

New Features for iOS:

• Devices now have signal strength measurements where applicable (BlueTooth LE)
• Independent enable/disable of scan and advertise by device family (BT, BTLE, Bonjour, WiFi AP)
• Improved low-power consumption for all device families
• New register application interface & callbacks - removed popups
• Sending events for developer to decide on messaging
• Bluetooth LE devices are now subject to a moving-average window on strength (eliminates chaotic behavior with signal strength)
• Better guarantee/handling of unique advertising names
• Report new devices instantly; report lost devices after de-flapping

Of course both versions get the usual various stability fixes, performance improvements, and some bug fixes.  Due to limitations of the different OS, we strive to make the releases on-par between platforms.  You will see that our adding things like Bonjour to Android and signal strength to iOS is an example of such.

At the LAUNCH hackathon, (where we kicked off our SDK) we were honored and surprised by the creative projects that came out of the event.  Some of our favorites were Sample Around, which won $5000 for a food sampling app that leveraged our proximity engine.  The "one I could use daily" was from the team at 85, who created an iPad menu app which noticed when you came back a second time to a restaurant and after welcoming you, gave you the ability to order the same thing again, or try something new based upon your last purchase!  A delightful idea!

Register to be a NewAer Developer and lets see what you've got to top those concepts!