MiramarMike: Blog

As I am looking at how venues, both big and small, are digitising themselves for this crazy mobile world that we seemed to have ended up in I am constantly bumping up against the word, iBeacon . And what I've discovered is that it is yet another genius marketing move from Apple having us all believe it is some sort of magic from Cupertino. What is iBeacon? This is what Apple will tell you iBeacon is: ... a new technology that extends Location Services in iOS. Your iOS device can alert apps when you approach or leave a location with an iBeacon. In addition to monitoring location, an app can estimate your proximity to an iBeacon (for example, a display or checkout counter in a retail store). Instead of using latitude and longitude to define the location, iBeacon uses a Bluetooth low energy signal, which iOS devices detect.  (source:  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6048 ) You should know that the actual word, iBeacon, is a trademarked word owned by Apple . So, is it some m

An excellent post from +Ben Gracewood  has sparked a Twitter conversation that all New Zealand companies should read. Where the developers at? http://t.co/2wNmDi0ttu — nzben (@nzben) May 28, 2014 And I mean all NZ companies as this is not just about  +Vend Point of Sale , +Xero Accounting Software  and all the other "rock star" tech companies. If you are a modern, sustainable and growing company then you're using computers to run your business. Yes, yes, I know that the majority of what's in your face is developed/maintained by large corporates such as Google, Microsoft, Oracle and the like. But, if you've got anything that resembles "secret sauce" (the stuff that makes you different to your competitors down the road) then you already know that there is no off-the-shelf software product that truly makes your business hum. It's either a Heath Robinson affair of cobbled together large systems from the likes of Google, Microsoft which needs spe

A week or so ago I was kindly invited to participate in a rather unusual, but hopefully the first of many, start-up weekends as facilitated by the ever energetic  +Dave Moskovitz . His idea was to bring together a select band of influential government employees, hackers and coders and "open data advocates" (such as myself) to put some skin to the "let's make all government held data open and usable" cry. Dave focused on the Result 9 area of government which, under the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), has been tasked with running: ... a collaborative effort by government agencies to deliver better public services for business by providing: Better integration of services Services designed for business Increased digital service delivery (source:  http://www.mbie.govt.nz/what-we-do/better-public-services ) Note that they are focused on making it easier for businesses to do business with the Government whereas Result 10 has a s