As everybody is noticing, NBC's Tim Russert is using a Fujitsu Stylistic ST5000 tablet to illustrate some of the election night math. (I didn't notice, since I was watching CNN, and only switched to NBC to see the tablet after reading about it.) They even have the display projected on a larger screen in the background.

My question is: does anybody know what is that piece of software running on it? It's some sort of simple whiteboard or note taking application, with big buttons on top, but it doesn't look familiar to me. It seems to hold multiple pages in the background, and callout-looking icons switch between them. Frankly, the UI looks weird and the buttons look oddly stretched out. Why not just Journal? Does the NBC app actually do anything special?

Also, earlier today, Iggy complained that he didn't see President Bush's posse sport any tablets:

"This confirms to me that the tablet pc is still "hard" to use for executives."

Hmm, interesting point. How many real "CEOs" do you see using tablets, at least in public? I bet a lot of them still gravitate toward a quick pen and paper solution.

Update: Loren has managed to take a picture of the device being used by Dan Rather on CBS, and it seems to be a Toshiba tablet. However, Dan doesn't seem to be using it at all. What a shame. At the same time, the CBS folks have this gorgeous 40+" monitor that seems to be touch operated, allowing screens to be moved and images rotated by simple gestures, and annotations made by writing with a finger. It looks absolutely stunning, organic, and fluid, much like the screens in Minority Report.

The sad part is that this is something that I would expect to be able to do on my tablet, yet the tablet couldn't even dream of such an intuitive interface, not saying anything about being forced to use the special digitizer pen to operate the display on it.

Update 2: This is so funny! Dan Rather was just referring to his "old reporter's notepad" - his paper pad and pencil, and then talked about the more interactive map on "this gadget here" (stumbling a bit when trying to name it) - his Toshiba tablet, which was finally shown, and he even moved the mouse around a bit.

Update 3: This morning Chris sent me a link to Fujitsu's press release touting NBC's use of the new Stylistic ST5020. Nice piece of advertising, actually. I'd definitely take the latest Stylistic over the latest Motion, and now Fujitsu will get some of the brand name awareness that it still lacks. Brilliant! CBS's Toshiba doesn't seem to be getting nearly as much attention - Dan just didn't warm up to it enough. I liked this bit for newbies:

"A Tablet PC is a type of notebook computer that has a liquid crystal display (LCD) screen that a user can write on using a pen called a stylus. The handwriting is digitized and can be converted to standard text through handwriting recognition, or it can remain as handwritten text. With six intuitive Application Buttons, the two newsmen were able to quickly launch and toggle between different applications during the television coverage."

Toggle between different applications? I must have missed that, since I only saw that one odd notepad app running on it.

Update 4 (Man, this thing never ends, just like the election): Loren must be really bored today (I am too, I'm stuck in a brain numbing all-day session), since he has put together a bunch of reactions to the now infamous NBC Tablet PC. From geeky moments, to pathetic use of technology awards, a lot of people are noticing.

Two comments here. Microsoft, did you intentionally seed that tablet (or even the CBS one)? If not, kick yourself right now. And since you had everybody paying attention, and NBC actually had commercial breaks, why oh why didn't you and Fujitsu sneak in a commercial for the new tablet? People might have already noticed it, wondered what it was, and then you could have hit them with a nice TV demo. Kick yourself again.