Slashgeo

Controlling Google Earth and Warcraft 3 on a table top? The VerySpatial blog resumes it like this: "A Phd student at the University of Calgary’s Interactions Laboratory has come up with some pretty cool new interactive tools for Google Earth and Warcraft III. He’s using a tabletop environment to control how you interact with Google Earth. You can do much more hands on type interaction with the table setup. I think it’s a more natural environment, or much more paper map-like, than some of the mouse/keyboard setups we currently use. It’s worth checking out the videos [Google Video mirror]. They give a good idea of the types of things you can do with this new type of system. I particularly like the Warcraft III “Command and Control” system demo." [this is a copy of my /. submission, trying to slashdot VerySpatial! ;-)]

The ESRI User conference day 2 has less coverage. You can see this ArcGIS Explorer demonstration video [41 seconds, 14 megs .mpg] (via APB). Jeff Thurston wrote a good summary of his Day 2. The NovaGeomatics Blog links to a video of ESRI's impressive TouchTable demo, worthed to watch. Anything Geospatial has some notes on ArcPad 7.

Ogle Earth shows a video of an impressive touch screen GUI for Google Earth and NASA World Wind. It is similar to ESRI's TouchTable mentioned last year. From this article: "Until now, the touch screen has been limited to the uninspiring sort found at an ATM or an airport ticket kiosk--basically screens with electronic buttons that recognize one finger at a time. Han's touch display, by contrast, redefines the way commands are given to a computer: It uses both movement and pressure--from multiple inputs, whether 2 fingers or 20--to convey information to the silicon brain under the display." And yes, when you think of it, the iPhone has such an interface. We're getting there fast.

Google Earth Blog has a bullet on this upcoming feature. From their summary : "It appears Google Earth will be the application everyone will use to show off their new multi-touch screens when they first introduce them. Check out this story from engadget and you can see how sexy Google Earth looks on this large 52-inch screen. Try to look at the screen, not the show girl demonstrating it."

For more information about this and the link to see it in action, head on over to the Google Earth Blog.

A colleague sent me a CNET article about Hitachi's new StarBoard interactive surface showcasing Google Earth. Slashdot also discusses the technology. This type of technology has been discussed a few times in the past, specifically the ESRI's TouchTable, Microsoft's Surface and others working with NASA World Wind. From the article: "The surface itself is simply a rigid board. At the top there are two cameras that track the movement of your hands. These work independently of each other, so the device is essentially multi-touch. What amazed us is how easy to use the whole system was. It took no real instruction to get us playing with it. Using Google Earth with it was a treat. There was also a photo app, which was clearly just there to illustrate the multi-touch capabilities of the system." Update: 01/22 16:24 GMT by S : Slowly catching up geonews, closely related is Google's touchEarth Summer of Code project (link includes video) which sends touchlib/OpenTouch finger gesture events to the TUIO protocol. There's also the LG-Philips 52-inch multi-touch screen worth a mention.