Exploring the Physical Web (Without Buying Beacons) — Medium

Physical Web Beacons - Snook.ca

Jonathan takes a look at the physical web. Like me, he’s excited by the possibilities. Although he says:

Sadly, my mind quickly devolved into the annoyance of numerous notifications, like popup windows and other distracting adverts, vying for my attention.

This is a common worry with the physical web, but it’s unfounded. All a beacon does is broadcast a URL. You have to actively look for the URLs being broadcast—they can’t send notifications.

It all just feels like QR codes. They’ll be all over the place and most of them won’t be very useful.

I understand this concern, but whereas QR codes are completely opaque to humans, at least URLs can—and should—be human-readable …so, unlike QR codes, a URL can give you some idea of what awaits.

mozilla-magnet/magnet-client-desktop: A simple Physical Web menu-bar app for URL discovery and broadcast

This should be a lot more straightforward than process I linked to before.