Physical Web - Business Card's End?
Last week I briefly mentioned an Android phone could be configured to broadcast a Physical Web URL beacon. Technically this is done by programming the Bluetooth controller chip to periodically advertise a Service UUID and a Service Data PDUs according to the Eddystone format . Practically, today this can be done with a help of the Beacon Toy app . To receive the beacons, either on Android or iOS, Chrome Browser v49 (or later) must be installed, with the Physical Web option enabled under Privacy settings. Physical Web supports only https:// URLs and they cannot exceed 17 characters (with some encoding ), so generally the links should be short, or a URL shortener (such as https://goo.gl ) should be used. Proper http forwarding is supported, but some services (such as LinkedIn) make tricks rendering their shortcuts incompatible with Physical Web (hey, LinkedIn, this is your wakeup call!). So with the Beacon Toy it is just a few clicks to have your URL of choice set up as a Physi...