Beacon is a location-broadcasting application for you and your friends. The application is a standalone, fast and light way to share your location with your friends so they can find you at concerts, school, shopping malls, or anywhere else GPS functionality can be used. In addition as well, Beacon can be used to track your friend’s locations, so you can find them. The idea for Beacon was conceived out of the need for an application to find friends at large events, such as music festivals. Specifically we thought that an application that would guide a user to their friend’s location would be especially useful. Moreover, getting directions to your friend’s location, or letting your friend find your location, should be as easy as setting up a “beacon” for guidance.
##Functional Properties
Beacon broadcasts a user’s location in the following ways:
- Friend-List Broadcast
- Friend-List Broadcast allows a user to broadcast their location to everyone, or to a select group of people from their friends list.
- Friend-to-Friend Broadcast
- Friend-to-Friend Broadcast allows locations to be shared with as few as one person, who can choose to track you or not.
- Global Broadcast
- Global Broadcast is a public location broadcast. Anyone with the BeaconTM application has the ability to see this location.
Beacon will use GPS real-time functionality. If user A chooses to track user B’s Beacon they will be guided to that user via an on-screen pointer.
A user can choose who they send the Beacon via a friends-list of contacts who also have the application.
Basic direct messaging to all individuals who are on a user’s friends-list.
Users are able to select friends from their friends-list and request that they share their location.
A list of nearby public locations is provided where a user can choose to set up a beacon, such as a restaurant, art gallery, or museum.
Instead of texting directions to people at large events (such as a large music festival or a sports game) Beacon will allow people to find each-other. This is especially useful if people get separated. Beacon can be used by users to find their friends at a music venue when they get separated. They can set up a beacon at their current location and broadcast it to their friends. Their friends will then receive a notification with a choice to accept and be directed to the beacon, or to decline.
If a user is organizing a meet-up with a specific group of people they can simply select a list of people from their friends-list and broadcast the location of the meet-up to them. The benefit to the user is that their friends, or whoever they are broadcasting their location to, will be able to know where they are or where they are going, and be able to meet up with them. This is a better option than calling because it is not affected by loud environments and is easier than text messaging because it is based on location. Furthermore, the users of Beacon can message each other to send pictures of landmarks to make it easier to find each other.