This is something we at Radius Networks are trying to figure out. We've been committed to open source for a while and wanted to get the proposal published -- but are actively researching how to properly establish this spec.

Do you have examples of organizations or communities that have good answers to your questions?

I don't know that I'm asking questions here, but I don't really understand an "open source spec" -- public specs are public, there isn't really source to a spec.

You're asking for a community RFC on a spec, but have not specified how the good ideas will come forward, who will be voting on them, etc. If it's just your company as the "voting party," it's not very open either.

This just leaves the Radius Networks spec for beacons.

I think the answer would be to propose the beacon to be part of the Bluetooth SIG specifications. Any group of 3 companies in good standing in the Bluetooth SIG (adopter or above) can propose this to the SIG. This is called a New Work Proposal. This can then be taken up by a Study group/working group to actually get the specifications adopted by the Bluetooth SIG.

This is the link to the NWP: https://www.bluetooth.org/docman/handlers/DownloadDoc.ashx?d... (Requires login and you need to be a Bluetooth SIG member)

Edit: This may be a better link as it shows the dcouments available in the Bluetooth SIG. https://www.bluetooth.org/en-us/specification/reference-publ...

I've done quite a lot of thinking about how governance boards could work (or not) for mobile-based projects.

The short answer is that sitting on a governance board takes time and effort, and mobile developers at large aren't really convinced of the benefit (relative, to, say, the Debian advisory boards).

To overcome this you'd need to recruit from people invested in the problem. Probably your competitors.

AltBeacon will not register as a CoreLocation Beacon on an iOS device.

Full disclosure: I work for Radius Networks.

So how do I deal with supporting both Android and iOS from a single Beacon?

I believe the easiest approach would be to broadcast both formats.

Interested to know how you intend to do that with all the advertising space already used up by one of the beacon advertisements?

One option is to alternatively switch between both broadcasts on a single radio.

You broadcast a single iBeacon-only message, sleep for a few hundred miliseconds and then broadcast a new AltBeacon message.

The beacon does this so quickly, that it's usually sending out two or three of both kind of messages every second. It's effectively an iBeacon + AltBeacon in one device.

You can use this example to send this example code on github to run multiple advertisers. (May be a bit of overkill to just send 2 kinds of beacons but does provide accurate timing control over the beacons). http://nordicsemiconductor.github.io/nRF51-multi-role-conn-o....

However it is really a waste of energy to send 2 types of beacon packets when one should suffice. However it is technically possible.

My company, Radius Networks, does sell different hardware configurations as well as software to broadcast as a beacon.

http://www.radiusnetworks.com/

I really love the USB powered model, especially for something like PunchClock. No batteries means no dead batteries.

http://store.radiusnetworks.com/products/radbeacon-usb

We also released a number of open source projects that can help with projects like this. Including the ibeacon cli (if you are on a mac just `brew install ibeacon`), or if you want more than iOS check out the Android iBeacon Library (https://github.com/RadiusNetworks/android-ibeacon-service).

Sorry for the shameless plug!

I just bought your MacBeacon app the other day. Works like a charm, thanks!

But who are the new ninjas?

"growth hackers", whatever that means

Sounds like someone who prunes trees and shrubs.

"Did some growth hacking on the hedge funds, bagged it, 100% organic product..."

FWIW, I used vundle for quite a while and went back to pathogen because vim's load time was much faster. Perhaps they have improved that.

    vim --startuptime time.txt

I think my lil mac screen capture app is actually a pretty good example, originally in v1 it only uploaded to imgur and had no UI except for the menu. V2 I added advanced features like a preferences window and history.

http://captured.codeography.com

While building this I did try hard to focus on what I could do to ship right away, and nothing more. Even for v2 I had to concentrate on limiting the features, which was quite the challenge. At this point, I cant even remember half the things that I needed to implement.

Same things we did too: v1 just simple screen shot for mac v2 screen edit functions v3 version for win with edit v4 personal profile with history v5 easy-sharing

http://pix.am

Thank you for writing this. It pretty much nails it. I need to print this and tape it to the wall next to my desk.

Discomfort.

As a former hiring manager I can tell you I once tried to give feedback.

There was no threatened litigation, nothing like that at all.

But it resulted in the guy trying to argue the points I made, convince me that he should still get the gig. I tried to be polite and explain clearly our reasoning -- but he just kept pushing. I nearly had to hang up on him to get him off the phone.

At that point I decided whenever I needed to turn someone down I would be as quick and opaque as possible. Since then I never had a problem. Better yet, have HR do it for you.

One advantage to learning ruby is that the ruby community tends to be more entrepreneurial than other programming communities I have been involved in. Something awesome about the scrappy freelancers and startup folks I have met at the local RUGs.

If yup do decide to learn ruby, I highly recommend get involved in the community. They'll make great technical resources and business connections.