Adapting a map query interface for a gesturing touch screen interface

NewsStand is an example application of a general framework that we are developing to enable searching for information using a map query interface, where the information results from monitoring the output of over 8,000 RSS news sources and is available for retrieval within minutes of publication. The user interface of NewsStand was recently adapted so that NewsStand can execute on mobile and tablet devices with a gesturing touch screen interface such as the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. This action led to a discovery of some shortcomings of current mapping APIs as well as devising some interesting new widgets. These issues are discussed, and the realization can be seen by a demo at http://newsstand.umiacs.umd.edu on any of the above Apple devices as well as other devices that support gestures such as an Android phone.