After years of hype and fringe activity I believe we are nearing a tipping-point.

The internet is finally moving from a point-and-click/keyboard environment to a sensory "touch and feel" environment which isn’t restricted to a personal computer.

The iPhone is one such device which is a taste of things to come. The location-aware Snapper cards (being launched for public transport micropayments in Wellington) is another. The advent of real-time data, calculations and visualisations to better understand and manage climate change (and other stuff) is another.

And last week Microsoft announced Windows 7.

Chairman Bill Gates and Chief Executive Steve Ballmer showed off new Windows features based on software it calls "multi-touch". This will be part of the next version of Windows due out in 2009.

The ability to use touch to give users fingertip control of their screens could help revolutionise how computer desktops and mobile phones are controlled and would be an alternative to existing mice, keyboard and pen-based user controls (yay!).

This is part of the reason I recently joined Click Suite. As pioneers within the interactive industry they are certainly well-placed to embrace the multi-touch world on our horizon!