iBeacon

A couple of months ago I tweeted about an Israeli startup named ShopCloud that was showing off some fairly amazing retail technology: https://twitter.com/trauring/status/431121027528015872 https://twitter.com/trauring/status/431121374594080770 The interesting thing to me was that it enabled much of the functionality of Apple's iBeacon technology, without the need for physical iBeacons to be in place. It seems this fact wasn't lost on Samsung, which is now rumored to be trying to buy ShopCloud for about $80-90M. This was originally reported by the Israeli tech blog Geektime, and followed up by Israeli business news site Globes. This is particularly relevant if you look back at my post Who do you trust with your identity? which among other things looks at how Apple is using iBeacons to position itself as the preferred partner for mobile payments in the future. It's a smart strategy, giving the retailers powerful technology to engage their customers, while at the same time giving Apple access to those same customers. Google and various other companies have tried to use NFC to similar effect, but these efforts have largely failed. ShopCloud could allow Samsung, or whomever ends up purchasing it, an end-run around iBeacons and NFC. ShopCloud's INSIDE technology allows malls and store to map…