Street Fight Daily: Apple Rolls Out iBeacon Program, Square Picks Up In-Store

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.

apple_logoApple Starts iBeacon Product Certification Under ‘Made for iPhone’ Program (Apple Insider)
In a push for wider iBeacon adoption, Apple on Tuesday released specification requirements under the “Made for iPhone” program for third-party manufacturers looking to build products incorporating the Bluetooth LE-based technology. Sources said there are “no surprises” in what Apple is asking of hardware makers and applying for iBeacon branding is reportedly free.

LDS14: How Esri’s Amber Case Plans to Make Technology Invisible (Street Fight)
At the Street Fight Local Data Summit in Denver on Tuesday, Esri R&D Director Amber Case spoke about ‘calm technology’ and the future of location data. Case, who sold her startup Geoloqi to Esri in 2012, argued that mobile data should empower people and bring meaning to their lives by making interactions invisible.

Square is Testing a New App for Ordering Food: Square Pickup (Priceonomics)
Square, the mobile payments startup, is testing a new app called “Square Pickup.” It’s a simple app that lets you order food from a Square merchant ahead of time. The app is currently in testing with several San Francisco restaurants. Appropriately, we noticed the app when we were “picking up” lunch today.

LDS14: Why Data May Kill Content as the Key to Local Relevancy (Street Fight)
During a keynote at Street Fight’s Local Data Summit in Denver Tuesday, Carol Davidsen, chief executive at Cir.cl and a former Obama for America staffer, spoke about the way the campaign used data to avoid pricey local news buys, and how those learnings are shaping the way companies in the private market buy media.

Ford to Drop Microsoft From Car Systems (New York Times)
Ford has found a new software partner to power its in-car entertainment and communications systems, making plans to drop technology from Microsoft in favor of software from BlackBerry. Problems with Ford’s in-car systems, especially as the company introduced versions that came with dashboard touch screens, hurt the company’s customer satisfaction ratings in recent years.

LDS14: Inventory Data Could Help Turn The Tide for Brick-and-Mortar Retailers (Street Fight)
The rapid growth of Amazon, and the high-profile decline of brick-and-mortar retailers like Borders, masks a surprising statistic: e-commerce makes up only 5-10% of total retail sales in the country. During a panel at Street Fight’s Local Data Summit in Denver Tuesday, panelist argued that bringing inventory data online could provide small, brick-and-mortar stores with an advantage over their online-only competitors.

Uber Outage Caused by Data Center Problem (Wall Street Journal)
Buzzy startup Uber experienced a temporary outage Tuesday night that halted the car-hailing service across the country. On its Twitter account, Uber said service was restored after more than an hour-long break. The company said the problem was sparked by an outage at a West Coast data center operated by a company that runs a corporate computing hub.

LDS14: Charting Consumer Behavior In the Real World (Street Fight)
At Street Fight’s Local Data Summit on Tuesday, LocalSEOGuide proprietor Andrew Shotland started off a morning panel discussion on charting consumer behavior in the real world by asking panelists how close the local data industry is to being able to collect and aggregate the location of consumers, and then sell that information directly to marketers.

When Will Retailers Jump on the iBeacon Bandwagon? (CNet)
While companies are still figuring out the best way to use Apple’s location-sensing tech, iBeacon, push notification specialist Urban Airship believes it has a way to make it relevant to both retailers and consumers. Urban Airship on Wednesday unveiled enhancements to its service, offering a new way to automate marketing messages and specifically target audiences for push notifications, or those alerts that pop up on your phone based on the apps you’ve downloaded.

LDS14: As New Sensors Emerge, Risks and Rewards in Location Data (Street Fight)
The bulk of location data may come from smartphone’s today, but a new wave of sensors could open up a range of new possibilities for developers and businesses to interact with consumers a given place. During a panel at Street Fight’s Local Data Sumit in Denver Tuesday, speakers from Intel, Qualcomm, and KS Technologies discussed the way chip-level innovations are driving the local tech space, and how new sensors could open up a flood of consumer location data.

Easy Mobile Web Site Builder Duda Expands To All Platforms (TechCrunch)
Duda has already been in the space around mobile website creation, but it now wants to extend into all the other platforms, hence this move. The new platform boasts that it can create a multi-screen website that will work on multiple devices in one click by pulling existing content from your old website, social networks and online listings, and carry features like Click-to-Call, maps and directions, coupons and OpenTable reservations.

LDS14: Thinknear’s Portnoy on Scoring Accurate Location Data (Street Fight)
In the world of location marketing, precision matters. In a presentation at Street Fight’s Local Data Summit in Denver on Tuesday, Thinknear GM Eli Portnoy described how location data is derived and how it can be improved.

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