Touch Computing and the Presidential Race in 2008

This article was originally posted on January 11, 2008.

Between Apple’s touch interface (as launched with its iPhone) receiving broad consumer acceptance and Microsoft’s surface computing initiative, “Touch Computing” is gaining momentum as a user interface. Perhaps the best (and coolest) illustration of touch computing I’ve seen yet was part of CNN’s Tuesday night election coverage of the 2008 U.S. Presidential primary, as summarized by ZDNet.

The flat-screen display by Panasonic showing rich graphical data from a information system (GIS) software from ESRI (down to the frequently updated town-by-town vote tallies), accessed and manipulated via a sophisticated touch-screen user interface powered by a company called Innotive, made for excellent visual analysis. The data truly told the story as it transpired.

Demonstrations of Innotive’s technologies for managing still and video content can be viewed here. Watch for more from this company and increased adoption of this type of technology in 2008. Now if there are some improvements in analytics that the pollsters can use in their exit polls…

Originally published at https://mikegil.typepad.com.