In the wake of its taxi upgrade, NYC will upgrade 250 old phone booths across the city with 32-inch touchscreens that provide access to local neighborhood information — and the “smartscreens” will eventually be wired to make Skype calls, log into email, and serve as WiFi hotspots. “The goal is to pilot it and see what the response is,” said city spokesman Nicholas Sbordone. Perhaps most important to the 8 million New Yorkers who won’t go near current pay phones: “They’re built to be cleaned with a jet hose,” said Tom Touchet, CEO of City24x7, which will install the screens. “They’re waterproof and dust-proof.”

[pcmag]

Students at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands have created a “Reality Touch Screen,” a 10 meter long touchscreen that accepts up to 100 multitouch inputs at a time. As we see from this short video, the effects they’ve been able to create are wild and the sensitivity looks great.

via vimeo.com

Description from Vimeo site:

"The latest from The Media Merchants is this interactive experience for Starbucks.

Located in the storefronts of two Starbucks, one in Vancouver and one in Toronto, the user guides a creature of their choosing (hummingbird, dragonfly or butterfly) on an adventure to find all the ingredients unique to each of the three Tazo teas currently being promoted by Starbucks.

Waiting for a bus is boring. But it's about to get much less boring in San Francisco, where touchscreen multi-player games are coming to bus shelters.

The guide contains: 1) an overview of the core gestures used for most touch commands 2) how to utilize these gestures to support major user actions 3) visual representations of each gesture to use in design documentation and deliverables 4) an outline of how popular software platforms support core touch gestures (below).

Download

Touch Gesture Reference Guide

For wireframes and mock-ups:
Visuals only (PDF)
Visuals only (EPS)
Visuals only (OmniGraffle Stencil)
Visuals only (Visio Stencils)
How to Guide (Visio)

A new multi-touch screen device.. I think this is the first one to come onto the market since the iPad. The blog article claims it was launched in NYC at a "big launch event", but has anyone ever actually heard of it before?