With the American elections occurring this year, many people have probably witnessed CNN reporter John King at his “magic” wall: an enormous multi-touch map.
Using “on-the-fly” GIS technology, he analyzes voting patterns by turnout, ethnicity, age, religion, education, and even by television markets. It even seems to work well; unlike ArcGIS, I have yet to see it crash.
While the software appears to be custom made for CNN, it’s built on Perceptive Pixel ’s Multi-Touch Screen; a tool that has been limited to presenting data for defense, finance and other government areas.
Perceptive Pixel is a 10-person, New York-based company founded by Jeff Han , a research scientist at NYU (see YouTube demonstration here ). A basic version of Perceptive Pixel’s Multi-Touch Screen costs about $100,000, and CNN’s version is loaded with extensive custom software, making the price considerably more expensive.
Perceptive Pixel is helping to bring GIS technology to the masses. For GIS professionals, perhaps multi-touch interfaces will one day replace the mouse.
1 response so far ↓
Multi-touch screen will be next thing on multi-medias. One can make a multi-touch screen on their own. Here’s how.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQpr3W-YmcQ