Surfacing new applications with Microsoft Surface

MSPowerUtilities — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:23:00 GMT

Today’s Boston Globe contains a brief article about Microsoft Surface and its application for visitors to Sheraton hotels. The story has a neat picture as well as information on how the hotel chain is deploying Surface to serve as a virtual concierge for its visitors.

We blogged in June about Harrah’s use of Microsoft Surface and its likely usefulness to the utility industry, especially for running the power grid, making it smarter and self-healing, and managing power fleets.

An example where it could be used is in grid visualization applications like this situational awareness application from our partner Areva. This solution provides “situational awareness” of power events on the grid. The energy management system dashboard demonstrates the ability to create on the fly dashboards, the ability to drill down into problem areas and send live snapshots to others for collaboration and problem solving. This could easily be accomplished with Surface.

We continue to see great hope for these sorts of new technologies and their applications to the utilities industry. We also continue to urge utilities to keep a keen eye on the types of technologies which potential younger workers will have grown up with, especially as they compete with other industries for the next generation of employees.

Larry Cochrane

Interactive and collaborative visual communications system of the future...without the flirting!

MSPowerUtilities — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:17:00 GMT

Interesting article in USA Today about Microsoft and Harrah's unveil high-tech interactive bar table (see: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2008-06-12-microsoft-harrahs-casino-table_N.htm)

Harrah’s Entertainment is using a high-tech interactive bar table to lets patrons order drinks, watch YouTube videos, play touch-screen games and even flirt with each other.

The bar table is composed of six rectangular tables with built-in 30-inch flat screens using Microsoft Surface technology. The surface technology was launched about a year ago (http://www.microsoft.com/surface/index.html ) and is finding its way into commercial applications such as the one at Harrah’s.

As Utilities deal with the increasing complexities of running the power grid and managing their power plants as fleets we envision surface computing becoming a corner stone of an interactive and collaborative visual communications system supporting critical utility operations. Can you think of the use of surface computing for power grid situational awareness, increased automation of distribution systems or how mobile workforce management and outage management systems could leverage this kind of technology? We can. We believe that the Utility of the future will incorporate surface computing into their daily operations and see great opportunity for our partners and Utilities to capitalize on this disruptive technology and improve their business operations. - Jon

Microsoft Power and Utilities Blog : harrah's entertainment

Surfacing new applications with Microsoft Surface

Interactive and collaborative visual communications system of the future...without the flirting!