Month: April 2016

(credit: Google)

About a year ago, Google announced "Eddystone," an open source, cross-platform Bluetooth LE beacon format. The Internet of Things initiative is a competitor to Apple's iBeacon, but it ups the ante by working on both Android and iOS and offering a wider selection of data payloads. Eddystone has been primarily focused on business and the enterprise, but today Google is providing more details on the secure beacon mode that it hopes will find its way into consumer goods.

Eddystone has four different frame types. Like iBeacon, there's the Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) payload, a 128-bit value that uniquely identifies every beacon in the world. The value itself isn't of much value unless you have an app from the beacon owner that knows to look for that specific beacon and do something with it. Imagine a Starbucks beacon that gets picked up by the Starbucks app and identifies itself as being at that specific store location.

For something a little more independent, there's the URL payload. The beacon beams a URL to every device in earshot that users can tap on to load a webpage. This is great for "one time" transactions where using an app would cause too much friction, like viewing a bus stop schedule or beaming money to a vending machine from your phone.

Google Chrome version 50 was released to the browser's stable channel yesterday, and in addition to a handful of new features and security fixes, the update also ends support for a wide range of operating systems that have been supported since Chrome launched on those platforms. Windows XP, Windows Vista, OS X 10.6, OS X 10.7, and OS X 10.8 are no longer supported.

This shouldn't come as much of a surprise, since Google promised last November to end support for these older OS versions in April of 2016. Old versions of Chrome installed on these OSes won't stop working (for now), but they'll no longer receive updates and there's no guarantee that things like Google account sign-in and data syncing will continue to work.

If you're still using one of these operating systems, you have a couple of options. One is to upgrade to a newer OS, assuming your hardware can handle it. Security patches for Windows XP stopped in April of 2014, and patches for OS X 10.6 stopped a few months before that. Updates for OS X 10.7 and 10.8 ended roughly when versions 10.10 and 10.11 were released, respectively, since Apple's unofficial policy is to provide security fixes for the most recent OS X release and the two previous releases. Windows Vista is still getting bare-minimum security patches from Microsoft, but that ends in April of 2017.

An interpretation of a recently discovered FCC filing from Microsoft. Xbox One Super-Slim! Has a nice ring to it, right? We'll have to wait until late June to find out, if not sooner. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

Microsoft's Xbox One is in a bit of an awkward spot. On the one hand, Sony's PlayStation 4 is substantially outselling it and has clearly won the hearts of gamers everywhere. On the other hand, built as a games machine it's too expensive to take on the plethora of streaming media systems from the likes of Apple and Roku.

But the unique opportunity forced on console companies by the combination of 4K video and virtual reality gives Microsoft the opportunity to solve both of these problems not just now, but forever. By treating its console a bit more like a PC, the company could offer not just the high-end gaming machine that console fans crave, but also a $150 system able to go head-to-head with the Apple TV and every other gadget that's trying to turn the TV into an app platform.

From the moment of its first unveiling, it was clear that Microsoft wanted the Xbox One to be all things to all people. It had games, of course, but it was not merely a gaming system. Microsoft positioned it as an all-in-one entertainment system, with games, music, and movies all as core features. Official TV tuner accessories have been added, along with limited DVR-like capabilities. This summer it will be extended further still, with the Xbox One adding apps built for the Universal Windows Platform.