Multitouch has more or less turned into a buzzword these days – sometimes, its implementation makes sense and comes out as pretty useful (see the iPhone and Microsoft’s Surface), however, other implementations turn out be debatable. There is another implementation out there, one that received a lot less attention from the press than the aforementioned cases: Jeff Han’s Perceptive Pixel.Microsoft, and more so Apple, might be stealing all the thunder when it comes to multitouch technology, but Perceptive Pixel has been chugging along undercover just fine with their massive multitouch displays, which are now seeing use in CNN’s coverage on the United States primaries. Cue the Magic Wall.
CNN correspondent John King stood in front of a gigantic display, showing a map of Florida, and as he tapped on the various counties on the screen, their results would pop up. He could pinch and zoom graphics.
“It’s a stupendous way to explain a lot of complicated data,” says David Bohrman, chief producer of CNN’s political coverage. “Fundamentally, our job is to explain things to people, and we need to do it visually. This lets us do it naturally, without a keyboard or mouse getting in the way.”
Jeff Han’s response was honest. “News wasn’t the first market we thought of, but it’s an interesting application. Once the election calms down, you can see how this might work for other kinds of news, like financial, weather or sports.” It’s not known how much CNN has paid for the device, but according to The Washington Post, a stripped down, basic version of the device costs USD 100000.
YouTube has a video showing election results in Texas which looks just stunning.
Whatever they paid, it seems that it was a great investment. Because of the “Magic Wall” and John King’s expertise with it, CNN is now the only channel I watch for election coverage.
I’m sure it won’t be too long before large multi-touch devices like these hit the consumer market at reasonable prices. I can’t imagine what practical use we would have for them, but I know I’d love to have a few in my house.
I can’t imagine what practical use we would have for them
I can’t imagine anything that special that it would justify the cost of buying such a device. But something I’d personally love would be to have a big screen on the wall, all my photos, movies and music videos stored there, and to be able to sort all those with my own hands to their proper places. It’s just somehow so natural to browse through pictures and arrange them on the screen using your hands. If you wanted to tag them or something, you could bring up a virtual keyboard, stretch it to a size suitable for your fingers and type away
You could perhaps also put on some TV channel or some video, stretch is to a smaller size and move to some corner, have it there while arranging to pictures.. That would be a very intuitive way to do those things.
EDIT: I should have watched the video first, they did all the stuff I mentioned here in that
So, anyway, it is cool tech and would work wonders as sort of a “living” picture and video album in your livingroom 
Edited 2008-05-10 07:27 UTC
On the cheapest side of the alimentary chain, there is an alternative that could do the magic. Wiimote whiteboard anyone?
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/
That’s a nice link. Interesting videos.
It would be cheaper, and look better, to have a CGI Op. sitting just out of view manipulating the display from a traditional computer. This way the presenters can focus on their performance, and not have to worry about technical issues.
Many times when MS’s and Apple’s multitouch stuff has been brought up I tried to quote Jeff Han’s work on some forums, but it just seemed nobody cared. But thing is, determination and good work gets paid in the end, this way or another.
is a system of one or two screens where either of them can be tilted like a drawing board.
it should remove most worries about work strain from wrists and neck (working on a vertical or horizontal surface).
I saw this on CNN and wasn’t sure if it was jeff han’s wall. It was cool to see it used in a real application. It’s a huge step forward from ‘interacting’ with a green screen. Also glad to see jeff doing well after all the hard work put in.
That was one impressive video (I’m not easily impressed these days).
And we are still arguing about the merits of command line vs. GUI? 😉
The CNN tittilation is mental masturbation.
It’s perfect for the War Room Scenario but in general use it makes Star Trek Next Generation and everything that followed seemed more interesting.
It’s re-representing data in a more “hands on” way of not using a mouse, on a big wall.
Greaaaat. Now I can see this being useful for Scientists, specifically climate changes in real-time, geological activities of fault line shifts, etc., but none of that has anything to do with this Big Screen, other than it’s a cute way to zoom in and out while in a standing presentation position.
What makes or breaks such displays aren’t the Interfaces, but the power of the tools these interfaces are connected with and their intended purposes.
Zooming in and out of National->State->County->City view over and over with Red vs. Blue demographics, repeat and rinse 5,000 times ala CNN gets boring real fast.