Amid all the announcements, hype and “location wars”, this is my favorite observation from this year’s SXSW Interactive festival in Austin, TX.  From CNN:

These aren’t your father’s CEOs

If there was a pinstripe suit in Austin this week, we didn’t see it.

The movers and shakers of the online world are young, casual and come at business from a different angle than their Wall Street forbearers (a fact not lost on SXSW Web Awards host Doug Benson, who joked that acceptance speeches would all be short because the winners weren’t used to being out of their basements).

But there’s nothing like seeing tech’s youthful leaders for yourself — and all in one place.

Once you’ve watched a company founder tossing fuzzy dice into a crowd of screaming fans or doing the backstroke on the floor of the Hilton lobby at 2 a.m., you won’t think of “CEO” the same way ever again.

The default choice for immediate election results is usually CNN, the ever-flashy FOX News, or a website with real-time data. But, who knew the guys over Google Maps have been making their own mashup?

Google Maps has created live primary results by county for Iowa, New Hampshire and Florida! How much more exciting can your election headquarters experience be? Screw Wolf’s New TeeVee. Make your own at home.

Very cool technology that also works in Google Earth. When overlayed with census or GIS data, you can draw some interesting (and valuable!) information about how the election was won.

Wolf Blitzer has some new gadgets in the CNN news room this election season, chief among them a brand new multi-touch display.

The “Magic Wall” was unveiled during the Iowa Caucuses and is powered by Jeff Han‘s incredible software. Han first showed his technology to the world during the 2006 TED Conference and received widespread acclaim and soiled pants from obsessed fans. As he used both hands to manipulate a globe, fly over mountains, edit images and delicately move flickering orbs around the screen, the audience giggled with joy.

Blitzer’s implementation of the technology seems to be improving with each primary election broadcast and tonight’s was a clear improvement, not only in technology but in their use of it. Previously befuddled by the new teevee, the CCN anchors did little more than throw images around the screen. Later, they used virtual bingo balls to dump them into candidate buckets, representing votes. Flashy, but still pretty useless.

Tonight, they had a map of South Carolina and were able to watch data from each county load in simultaneously, zooming in to each region, watching exit polls and final results, annotating with markers and using the pinch maneuver with increased skill. The potential for this technology is ming-boggling and I can only hope that they continue to perfect it for the general election in November.

Remember Tim Russert’s white board from the 2000 election? They upgraded to a tablet PC in 2004. We’ve come a long way.