He was always able to communicate with machines through touch. He told the traffic lights to change, but i always assumed he used the phone he had to tell them that. Now in this episode we see him hover his hand above the keyboard of his laptop to show Tracy the info on her and Niki. Apparently now he just has to be near machines to do it?

Technopaths actually doesn't even need to be at that close range or even use their hands after their ability improved with the time. It's definately improved in micahs case but I think that if they don't kill his character (which I hope not), we will see them doing great things even by looking on such devices or even being able to build devices together in not time in the future.

Yup, he's always been able to use his powers without any gadgets. In the scene with the phone, he'd told it to send a GPS signal.

In Landslide, he put is hand on or close to the monitor of the voting machine to manipulate it and all the other networked computers.

He has built in Wi-Fi.

LOL ! I think Micah is going to be like Walt from Lost, there whenever a storyline needs to move along, but practically non-existent