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Low tech sometimes succeeds where high tech fails – as one ingenious company is proving.
Chirp sends data over sound, a burst of audio that usually sounds like a bird's tweet. It doesn't transmit much data – 50 bytes – but it turns out you don't need much bandwidth to bridge the gaps between the real world and the digital world.
Chirp has already been put to use, and unusually for a small company, boasts hundreds of millions of users. Spun out of research at UCL, Chirp first stepped into the public eye four years ago with a consumer app. But it recently switched to a B2B model – licensing the technology for use in all kinds of cases via a software development kit.
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Sound has obvious disadvantages. One is that it needs to deal with noise interference, which is everywhere. And in the open, the range is short: 10 to 20 feet. But the big advantage is easy to miss: the audio bursts are a one-to-many, multidirectional transmission. So Chirps can be used as a signal – say a trigger, or a wake up call – for millions of digital devices at once. It can be played at a stadium, for example.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday November 12 2016, @04:45AM
Privacy advocates are warning federal authorities of a new threat that uses inaudible, high-frequency sounds to surreptitiously track a person's online behavior across a range of devices, including phones, TVs, tablets, and computers.
The ultrasonic pitches are embedded into TV commercials or are played when a user encounters an ad displayed in a computer browser.
—http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-that-use-inaudible-sound-to-link-your-phone-tv-tablet-and-pc/ [arstechnica.com]
Silverpush Stops Using Sneaky, Inaudible TV Audio Tracking Beacons After FTC Warning
-- https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160318/09445033954/silverpush-stops-using-sneaky-inaudible-tv-audio-tracking-beacons-after-ftc-warning.shtml [techdirt.com]
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Tuesday November 15 2016, @02:54PM
I guess this means that they're just the only one lately that was brought to task about it? This must be the yadda yadda regarding how no one is doing it, right?
I expect that the new administration will provide a more business friendly experience for this sort of interactive marketing process. It is not like the previous one was unfriendly towards personalized tracking. If consumers wanted to vote about this, I guess they can with their dollars... but the marketing is so good, it's practically personalized! I doubt there will be too many complaints, but there will be more shrugging.
I don't know why some people get angry about the message, though. It's not like I am making the stuff up.
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Tuesday November 15 2016, @07:17PM
I was just offering corroboration for part of what you wrote. The response from frojack did seem to be that you were making it up.