A message for our valued partners regarding Covid-19

To our valued partners,

We are fully aware of the turbulent times we are in and and strongly believe that we will overcome these difficult days together with unity and solidarity.

Although we can not be physically together as a team, we are fully on top of our business, only this time working remotely from our homes. As a technology company, we are efficiently managing remote working while keeping our spirits up and not lose our joy as a team during this period.

Internally, we have taken all the necessary steps towards keeping our employees safe and encouraged them to stay home and be cautious at all times.

You may reach out to us anytime -through dropping us an e-mail at hello(at)blesh(dot)com– as we are here to help you for all of your location-based intelligence and advertising needs. We continue to be prepared for everything as much as possible, and follow all developments very closely.

We wish everyone healthy days ahead. Please stay at home and keep your spirits up.

-Blesh

What’s New with Location and Bluetooth APIs on iOS 13

by Anıl Taşkıran, iOS Developer at Blesh

With the recently announced iOS 13, we see that Apple’s approach to location privacy is getting more and more serious. This new update will include recurring notifications for users to see whether the app uses their location in the background or not, allowing them to adjust the setting regularly. Continue Reading…

Blesh and İşbank Introduce Digital Money Box for Children

Turkey’s largest private bank, İşbank, strongly retains the practice of giving out money boxes to its junior customers, a practice originally launched back in 1929 to increase savings awareness in the society. Now to trigger and inspire its new generation of junior customers to save more, Blesh and İşbank partnered for the digital version, named the Digital Money Box. Continue Reading…

University Students in Istanbul [Infographic]

Istanbul is home to more than half a million university students coming from all parts of Turkey and attracts many students from other countries as well.

Blesh Ads team has looked into the world of the university students in Istanbul, by compiling all the data they received from Blesh beacons at the universities in the city and through geofencing. Take a look at the infographic below to get a glimpse at the life of Istanbul’s university students. Continue Reading…

Ramadan Feast 2017: Where Did Everyone Go? [Infographic]

The Ramadan month was over at the end of June and the Muslims all around the world joyously celebrated Eid al-Fitr by visiting families and friends as well as traveling. The three-day feast began on Sunday, June 25th and ended on June 27th.

Ramadan feast is a marvellous time for families to gather and spend time together which results in many people traveling across country to meet with their loved ones. Since the feast is in summer, it also marks the beginning of the summer holidays when many individuals take the week off for a longer escape. This all meant a surge in airport traffic and we were ready to see how feast would effect footfall in big cities, vacation spots, airports and malls.
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BleshSDK and Xamarin iOS Integration

 Written by Bilgehan Işıklı, iOS Developer at Blesh

The idea of cross platform development tools is very appealing, I get it. Instead of dealing with two different development processes, you get to work on only one and Voilà, you have your Android and iOS applications. I mean, who doesn’t want that, you get your product for half the price. However, that is not the case most of the time: yes, for not-that-complex projects, you can accomplish this at a certain level, but things start to get ugly when you get your feet wet enough.  Continue Reading…

[Infographic] Where Do Travellers Go?

…Can they find their way home? Travelling season is on and we saw wanderlust travellers in Turkey flocking to airports to escape the overwhelming city life. In the last 90 days, we saw more than 150K travellers travelling domestically (60%) and abroad (40%).

Continue Reading…

[Infographic] Getting to Know White Collar People in Istanbul

After work drinks, strolling through the sea side, office lunches outside and lounging at the parks…. May is the favourite month of many white collar people in Istanbul, as that is when spring truly arrives there. After a very long winter which seemed to extend to late-April this year, most greeted May with much needed joy as it was finally warm enough to go outside.

Right before the summer season, when most of them will escape the city for their already planned holidays, we thought we’d have a look at how they spent their time during their favourite month. See the full infographic here. Continue Reading…

Bluetooth 5 and Beacons

Announced in June 2016, Bluetooth 5 has officially been adopted by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) as the latest version of Bluetooth in December 2016.

Bluetooth 5’s key feature updates include four times range, two times speed, and eight times broadcast message capacity, all compared to Bluetooth 4.2.  Continue Reading…

Blesh Beacons for Airports and Banks On Display at the Samsung Innovation Center

Beacon enthusiasts can now see beacons for airports and banks full in action at the recently opened Samsung Innovation Center in Istanbul.

Open for a full year at River Plaza, the Samsung Innovation Center includes Samsung’s IoT (Internet of Things) solutions for various purposes and verticals, including Samsung’s own devices as well as of companies in its Samsung Enterprise Alliance Program (SEAP). Continue Reading…

Blesh Partners with Volkswagen for Smart Key Fobs

Blesh has recently partnered with Volkswagen Turkey for its smart key fobs, to be sold online and handed out to new buyers starting from November 2016.

The smart key fob is a beacon itself, as it works with Bluetooth Smart (aka Bluetooth Low Energy). It is paired with Volkswagen’s mobile app, “Volkswagenim” (My Volkswagen).
Continue Reading…

Blesh and Unilever Campaign Gets Retail Technology Award

Retail Technology Awards, established by The International Data Corporation Turkey to honor the achievements in industry technological innovations within Turkey, awarded Unilever the third place in the Big Data & Analytics category for its Algida Cabinet Beacon Tracking project.

Unilever and Blesh partnered for the project to track the Algida icecream cabinets throughout Turkey.  Unilever came up to Blesh for a solution to track the location of the cabinets to ensure they are in the correct location and not lost.

Blesh beacons were placed on the cabinets and by signals received from 100+ apps on the Blesh network,  Unilever was able to see the location of the cabinets and track them in real time individually.

blesh_and_unileveraward

Are You Looking High Enough? A Beacon Story!

We have come a long way since Apple’s announcement of the “iBeacon” at the end of 2013. The term “iBeacon” came with a lot of questions for those who are not tech savvy – what does it do? What are the use cases? Isn’t Bluetooth a little too old to be new? Well, Bluetooth 4.0 was too smart to be, but it would be useless to write about the variety of changes and features that you’ve all probably have come to admire by now.

Continue Reading…

DenizBank Uses Blesh Beacons for Its Annual Event

DenizBank, one of the finalists for Most Innovative Bank at the 2015 BAI Banking Awards, has used the Blesh beacon platform for its annual Captains Meeting event held at Antalya Starlight Convention Center Thalasso and Spa. The event hosted more than 2.000 of Denizbank employees including top-level executives and branch managers.

Continue Reading…

Bark Beacon Project Receives a Silver Mixx Award

Mobilike, one of the leading mobile advertising agencies in Turkey, has received yet another award with their Bark Beacon project using Blesh beacons to make dogs living on the street get their voices heard through push notifications. The one of a kind project has now won a Silver Mixx award in the Mobile Advertising category at Mixx Awards Turkey.  Continue Reading…

Blesh Selected as One of Turkey’s Top Startups

Startup 100, established to select top performing startups in Turkey as well as encouraging their growth and expansion, has selected this year’s top 100 performing startups, judged by an independent panel of highly acclaimed thought leaders in business, technology and marketing. Blesh was selected as one of the top 10 performing startups, placing at number 7.

Continue Reading…

Infographic: Cross-Location Visits

We went for a full dive in all the data we received from our beacons and came up with a new infographic! Along with an update on our total number of beacons deployed, this time we also analyzed cross-location visits for airports, retail shops, banks and malls. 

Continue Reading…

iBeacon Map of Turkey [Infographic]

iBeacon-Map-of-Turkey-Infographic10.000 beacons and counting! Having recently surpassed the milestone, we have put together a study on the data we gathered from thousands of beacons we have located in 49 cities in Turkey. Feel free to share, or to contact us if you need more information through dropping us an e-mail at hello (at) blesh (dot) com. Continue Reading…

fastPay Offers Free Ice Creams Using Blesh Beacons

Turkey’s leading mobile payment platform, fastPay recently launched its summer campaign offering free icecreams at Kahve Dunyasi (Coffee World) coffee shops using the iBeacon technology via Blesh.

Continue Reading…

Hands-Free Payment: Google Makes Its Move

We have known and heard about hands-free payments for a while now thanks to Bluetooth enabled technologies. The solution is as easy as it is futuristic; customer completes the shopping and pays via the mobile app at the cash register by just saying so, without ever tapping a button. Continue Reading…

Will the Physical Web Take Us “Back to the Future”?

The year 2015 is not entirely what Robert Zemeckis in his epic movie, Back to the Future II, had predicted.

There are no hover boards that float above the roads, there neither are flying cars as a default means of transportation. Although real 2015 has fallen short of such imaginable yet juvenile predictions, not every aspect of Zemeckis’ imagined world is unreal. The foreshadowing details about the telecommunications means in the movie are strikingly similar to today’s reality. Continue Reading…

Blesh Pioneers the First Commercial Physical Web Beacons and SDK

Blesh Pioneers the First Commercial Physical Web Beacons and SDK to Connect People to The Internet of Things

Now Available: Blesh PW Beacons and PW App That Enable Developers to Assign
Web Attributes to Physical Objects for Frictionless Interaction between People and Things

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – December 16, 2014 — Developers who want a head start enabling physical objects to communicate with smart phones and other personal gadgets can now order Blesh PW Beacons and the Blesh PW App http://ec2-34-246-89-109.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com and participate in the public project called “The Physical Web”, https://github.com/google/physical-web an initiative that plans to let people walk up to smart objects and with a single tap interact with them on demand.

Continue Reading…

iBeacon Installation – Do Not Let a Small Stone Upset a Large Cart

iBeacon is one of the most recent and hottest technologies today, the benefits of indoor micro location accuracy open many doors to all sorts of advantages, analyses and different ways to enhance user experience. The first and most basic part of the implementation is the installation of your beacons. After choosing where to install the devices, the general 2,5 to 4m height locations will require you to install the beacons carefully in order to achieve long-term durability and effectiveness.

Continue Reading…

iBeacon Weekly – 31/10/2014

iBeacon Weekly – 31/10/2014

As 2015 is drawing near, marketing trend watchers are on the hunt for the upcoming trends to define the next year and whether the hype surrounding new technologies and concepts will be lasting. This week, Huffington Post named iBeacon as one of the top marketing trends of next year while The New York Times touched upon the increasing popularity of Bluetooth Smart technology and how it will define the Internet of Things. Continue Reading…

Urban Station Joins Hands-Free Payment

Urban Station, a global company providing office space for mobile workers, has joined Blesh and fastPay using iBeacon technology for their latest campaign with fastPay.
fastPay users will receive a notification on their 50% discount when they  are in 50 meters proximity to an Urban Station branch implemented with Blesh iBeacon devices.
Users will be able to get up to 100 TL discount per transaction until late-November.

iBeacon Weekly – 10/10/14

iBeacon Weekly News 10/10/2014

It was quite a week on iBeacons as Google announced its Physical Web Platform, hundreds of beacons were found in New York City and Blesh’s integration with fastPay was announced as a finalist on BAI awards. Continue Reading…

Migros and Blesh Partner for the New Generation Store

Migros and Blesh partner as Migros becomes one of the first brands in Turkey to use the iBeacon technology in its soon-to-be-opened store in Uniq Istanbul shopping mall in Maslak.
Aside from the iBeacon integration, the store will embrace many new technologies, as Migros customers will experience the new generation of shopping.

With the beacons deployed throughout the store, Migros customers will firstly receive a welcome notification right at the time they enter the store and later on as they continue to shop at other sections of the store, will get notifications on the products. Beacons are positioned precisely so that the customers can receive notifications on campaigns and new products based on the section they are shopping at. Migros customers will only have to download the Alışveriş RehberiM (My Shopping Guide) app and enable Bluetooth on their smart device.

Continue Reading…

“Hands-free Payment” is selected as a finalist on BAI Awards

fastPay and Blesh’s partnership on “Hands-free Payment” has recently been selected as a finalist in the Product and Service Innovation category at 2014 BAI – Finacle Global Banking Innovation Awards! The awards are granted by the Bank Administration Institute (BAI), the U.S. based prestigious institution of financial services sector and consultancy and technology solution partner of the American Bankers Association (ABA).

Continue Reading…

Blesh Attends Samsung Event

As Blesh, we attended the Samsung Event in Istanbul held on May 27-28 and successfully presented our services. We’d like to share the related news with you via the links below and thank you for your interest. We sincerely wish that our collaboration increasingly continues.

http://www.dunya.com/mobi/news_detail.php?id=229168
http://www.whiteline.com.tr/samsung-electronics-kurumsal-pazara-yoneldi/

Samsung Heads For The Corporate Market

An evergrowing corporate market proves to be an investment ground for tech giants. Samsung is prepared to offer interactive solutions to SMEs with the communication solutions and smart technology products they’ve developed.

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iBeacon technology provider of Samsung Corporate Forum 2014

Blesh will take place as the iBeacon technology provider in Samsung’s Corporate Forum 2014, which will be held in Istanbul Shangri La hotel in 27-28 May 2014. In the event innovative solutions designed for different industries will be introduced.

As Blesh will be presenting participants different experiences with iBeacon technology, it will also introduce its micro location services to opinion leaders. Blesh, which is a platform to recognise consumers indoor and know their micro-location precisely, continues its operations as the Secure Enterprise iBeacon provider at full blast. iBeacon technology expands the benefit of location information indoor, like GPS provides outdoor, and helps Brands reach consumers in the right place at the right time. As iBeacon technology creates a new marketing media to offer personalised campaigns to consumers, also lets brands to run location-based loyalty programs.

Continue Reading…

Mobile phones, PCs, Tablets rely on Bluetooth for wireless connectivity, set the stage for in-home automation hubs

Taken from Bluetooth.com;

From Bluetooth World 2014, the flagship connectivity conference from the Bluetooth SIG, IHS released details of its latest forecasts for the IHS Technology Connectivity in Consumer, Mobile and IT Market Tracker. The report puts Bluetooth penetration at 90 percent in 2014 for all mobile phones (not just smartphones), growing to 96 percent by 2018. Mobile phones serve as the hub for the Internet of My Things – the connectivity of the devices all around you – Bluetooth Smart enabled fitnesshealthsleep monitors, proximity tags, and even toothbrushes.

“The power efficient and intelligent Bluetooth Smart revolutionized the way consumers connect to the devices around them – anything, from a flower pot to a fork, can relay data back to users – and with the recent boom of devices we have seen, consumers are starting to expect and demand that connectivity,” said Suke Jawanda, Bluetooth SIG CMO. “We worked with Apple, Blackberry, Google and Microsoft to ensure all mobile OS platforms support Bluetooth Smart. This gives developers peace of mind. They know the products they build will work seamlessly with the phone, tablet or PC the customer already has, and for the consumer, it means their products will just work. Every time.”

Continue Reading…

Nowhere to Hide – How retailers can find and up-sell you in the aisles with iBeacon

On March 2014, Harry McCracken wrote about iBeacon in Times magazine, and told about how  the game in retail changes for both consumers and retailers..

Thanks to GPS, the apps on your phone have long been able to determine your general location. But what if they could do so with enough precision that a supermarket, say, could tempt you with digital coupons depending on whether you were hovering near the white bread or the bagels?

It may sound far-fetched, but there’s good chance the technology is already built into your iPhone or Android device. All it takes for retailers to tap into it are small, inexpensive transmitters called beacons. Here’s how it works: using Bluetooth technology, handsets can pinpoint their position to within as little as 2 cm by receiving signals from the beacons stores install. Apple’s version of the concept is called iBeacon; it’s in use at its own stores and is being tested by Macy’s , American Eagle, Safeway, the National Baseball League and Major League Baseball.

Continue Reading…

Blesh Joins Bluetooth World Event

On 02.04.2014, Hurriyet.com.tr published the news about Blesh regarding it is joining SIG’s Bluetooth World event organised in San Jose, US. bluetooth world event It is highlighted that Blesh, which has been working on Bluetooth Smart technology based ibeacon device production and mobile software development areas, has been invited as “Innovator” to SIG’s Bluetooth World Event organised in San Jose between 8th -9th of April’14. It’s also cited that Blesh will announce its ibeacon and mobile solutions and the mobile payment solution developed together with DenizBank’s fastPay mobile payment application.

Blesh Co-Founder Ugur Gokdere says that company’s mission is strengthening consumers’ mobile search, shopping and payment experiences with smart technologies and providing brands and marketers solutions to differentiate their mobile marketing, advertising and loyalty programs.