The Wi-Fi Alliance, a non-profit trade organization that includes Apple, Microsoft, Intel and hundreds of other tech powerhouses as members, which for the last three years has been focused on research and development in the WiFi sector, today announced a very big and significant upgrade to our very loved WiFi.
The technology is called Wi-Fi Aware and it allows Wi-Fi-enabled products to discover and communicate directly with nearby devices, applications or information, without relying on cellular data or an Internet connection.
Once you’ve gotten Aware enabled apps installed on your device, it will continuously broadcast and receive broadcast from any other Aware enabled devices nearby. All this will be done in the background and you do not need to worry about any extra effort from your side. According to Edgar Figueroa, President of the Wi-Fi Alliance, this new technology is highly power efficient, even more than traditional Wi-Fi, even though it will be running all the time without you really realising it in the background.
Think of it like a third eye which can sense what is going on in your surroundings. The service will use data you have provided on your social networks and other possible information sources and notify you about events that may be of significance to you.
It will help you find products and brands you prefer while you are happily trotting down a street by notifying you when you are in close vicinity of a store that can get you what you like.
Or maybe a long lost friend or relative is close-by and it would be a good thing to say hi! Normally we wouldn’t even know about such an occurrence unless the person is in our vision horizon (or whatever it is called), but now Aware will sense their presence and notify you if such an event occurs.
According to the development team, Aware will also be very useful in crowded places where it is normally impossible to even find your own limbs. Figueroa further adds that we can expect social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn to bring forward applications with Wi-Fi Aware before the end of the year.
