WOW! I want one! Just tell me where to buy? Is this the future of Interactive Dashboards?
These were the questions that popped up in my mind when I saw CNN correspondent John King picking and poking at a giant LCD touchscreen with the CNN electoral map on it. The interaction was so smooth that I couldn’t believe my eyes for a second. What in the world is that? is what I said to myself. They call it the CNN Magic Wall. Is this the future of Interactive Information Dashboards?
Washington Post Writes:
Standing in front of an oversize monitor, King began poking, touching and waving at the screen like an over-caffeinated traffic cop. Each movement set in motion a series of zooming maps and flying pie charts, which King was then able to position around the screen at will.
Watch the Video.
This is like a Giant iPhone. You can tap on a state to bring up the county level vote totals for that state. One can also shrink and expand a state by pinching or drawing the fingers apart. Just like the iPhone. Apparently SNL has also ordered one of these just to spoof CNN. Watch CNN’s John Roberts, Anderson Cooper and John King have fun with the SNL spoof of the magic election map.
Amused and amazed by it, I started searching on the web to know more about it. This is what I found:
The Giant Touchscreen is Invented by Jeff Han, a researcher at the New York University. Its called the Multi-Touch Interaction Research. Click here and check out the NYU research page. Jeff left school in 2007 and went on to start his own company called Perceptive Pixel. With a staff of only 10, Jeff has orders coming in from major news corporations, Armed forces, NSAs Etc. Check out the showcase video on the company homepage.
Each touch screen comes with custom built application at an additional cost. According to Washington Post, the stripped down version of the CNN Magic Wall (without the application) could cost around $100,000. That’s a bargain for the kind of technology and eye candy stuff these major corporations are getting.
“It’s just like Minority Report!” says Gawker.
In August 2006 Jeff showed off his invention at a TED conference at Monterey, California. He says that the touchscreen technology will change the way people interact with machines from now on. His approach is High resolution, Low cost and very scalable. He also says that the technology is not the interesting thing here, whats really interesting is what you can really do with it. He talks about the use of the technology in the world of data visualization. He says that there is so much data out there, but its just sitting. People are not actually accessing it because of poor interfaces and this technology can change that in terms of great graphics and easy user interface. Unfortunately I cannot post a Demo since its not just a SWF or an Excel File.
Below is the video.
[blip.tv ?posts_id=1404144&dest=-1 width=”550″ height=”400″]
