Expanding the "interface"

Future of the Screen: Terminator-Style Augmented-Reality Glasses

The idea of VRD was first tossed around at the University of Washington's Human Interface Technology Lab back around 1991. Thomas Furness, who'd been working on helmet-based displays for the Air Force in the '80s, and research engineer Joel Kollin were part of the team that put together the initial (and enormous) prototype. The concept was that tiny, ultra-low-power lasers could paint an image onto the human retina by scanning across it at high speed, essentially treating it as a tiny TV screen. If you could assemble a set of microscopic red, blue and green lasers, stick them where they could project onto your eyes, and hook them up to a computer, you could still see whatever you'd normally see, but with three-dimensional, full-color displays of additional information or imagery overlaid on the visible world—an effect called "augmented reality." Think of Arnold Schwarzenegger's sunglasses in Terminator, and you're on the right track.

Display - taken to the next level!

Future of the Screen: After the CRT, a Display Deluge

While the LCD-backlit LED has so far brought incremental advances to the mobile-computing space, the place where it's poised to have the most dramatic impact is in televisions. A high-end LCD HDTV has a contrast ratio of about 30,000:1, whereas LED LCDs have contrast ratios between 1,000,000:1 and 2,000,000:1. Power consumption and weight savings of LED-backlit LCDs are between 30 and 50 percent, and these savings translate into very attractive form factors—the latest LED LCD TVs from Sharp and others are only a little over 1 inch thick, despite their large (46 inch and up) screen sizes.

Surgical Robots Operate With Precision

Surgical Robots

Dread going the doctor? It could be worse. Your next physician could have the bedside manner of a robot. In fact, your next physician could be a robot.

Business Intelligence and Collaboration: The new frontier of decision making

By Kristina Kerr
How often do consult with your colleagues or an expert when you're making an important business decision? Probably most, if not all, of the time. A natural step in the decision-making process is to collaborate with people to ensure expertise, insight and stakeholder opinions are factored into each decision. Technology is evolving to support this growing trend (see Gartner's report titled The Rise of Collaborative Decision Making). Microsoft customers, like Univerzal Banka, are at the front of this technology curve using Microsoft SharePoint Server, Microsoft SQL Server, and Microsoft Office Excel for BI and collaboration. This allows Univerzal Banka personnel to boost their productivity and work more closely with colleagues.

Effective decision-making also requires data in the hands of everyone who needs it. That's why Microsoft has made large investments in managed self-service BI that enables end users to quickly manipulate large datasets in Office Excel 2010 (often millions of rows), streamline the integration of data from heterogeneous sources, and effortlessly share analysis through SharePoint 2010. Scroll down to get a sneak peek at some minute-long vignettes of a project code named 'Gemini'.

I encourage you to learn more about these important trends and their benefits at the upcoming SharePoint Conference 2009 and PASS Summit Unite 2009 - please note the special discount code for Microsoft guests below - where the BI team will show you how these innovations will help you make the most of your investments in the Microsoft BI platform.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Kristina Kerr
Group Product Manager
Microsoft Business Intelligence