by Michelle Lentz
My conference last week was held at the Rio Hotel & Casino, owned by Harrah’s, in Las Vegas. It didn’t take long for me to find the iBar in the “heart of the casino” (or rather, the lobby). As I was sitting on my barstool, sipping a drink, I noticed people around the outer rim of the circular bar. Everyone was hunched over the tables, touching them.
As soon as a table emptied, I made my way over and was thrilled to discover that the Rio iBar has 6 Microsoft Surface Tables. Not only is the multi-touch technology pretty cool, the software created for the bar was equally as cool.
There were several games, but the most intriguing app was Flirt. I couldn’t find them, but I can only assume there were cameras above every table. In Flirt, photos of the occupants of each table are displayed like a deck of cards. You can scatter them, flip them over, and resize each image. Select an image and you can select a bad pickup line (or a cute pickup line) from an available choice of “magnet-style” words and send that to the other table. You can also send the other table a drink or a table-to-table email.
The table is in a bar, and there’s more to a bar than picking up someone at the next piece of cool technology. You need to order drinks or, when you’re in the mood, you can make your own drink.
Not interested in the other tables? That’s fine. You can occupy yourself with bowling or pinball or any of a series of branded games. I was rather impressed by the game branding, actually. For instance, when you launch the bowling game, you’re throwing a lime at some empty Patron bottles. After a few rounds, you can change to an actual ball and pins, but that initial branding is there.
One other feature is YouTube. There are speakers in the tables, but with the clang-clang of the slot machines and the thump of the music, you can’t hear much. It’s in your best interest to call up someone doing something stupid on YouTube (and that’s so hard to find) and watch that after you and your friends have bought a few rounds. Some things don’t need sound to be funny. The connection to YouTube was rather fast, so I assume that somewhere in the table is an ethernet connection.
Anything on the table, including video, you can flip, spin and resize.
Admittedly, I spent a little too much time playing with these tables. I was fascinated. In fact, I managed to crash the table twice in an hour, so it’s still Windows in there somewhere.
If you get the chance to swing by the Rio – perhaps for the buffet, make sure you swing by the iBar. The tables are quite entertaining.
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