Introducing Slide-to-Select

Windows Vista did something similar to support both panning and selecting with touch screens.*

A vertical drag would pan the content, and a horizontal drag would act like a mouse: select or drag-drop the content. http://youtu.be/roP3YtLvblE?t=2m22s

I thought it worked well, even though it made horizontal scrolling harder (had to use 2 fingers).

Windows 8 uses tap-drag for selection instead. http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/touch-mouse-a...

(* I worked on this feature at MS back in the day)

Tidy (an iOS app for organising your photos) has this as well. Dont know how they do it, buts its really neat.