Slashdot Mirror
Does This Headline Know You're Reading It?
An anonymous reader writes "Not yet, but it could. German artificial intelligence researchers are combining JavaScript with eye-tracking hardware to create 'text 2.0,' which 'infers user intentions.' Unimportant words also fade out while you're skimming the text, and a bookmark automatically appears if you glance away. It can pronounce the words you're reading, and reading certain words can trigger the appearance of footnotes or even translations, biographies, definitions, and sound effects or animations, almost like the truly interactive books in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. 'With the help of an eye tracker, Text 2.0 follows your progress and presents effects just in time,' the researchers explain in a video. Meanwhile, DFKI has already created a free 'Processing Easy Eye Tracker plugin' (or PEEP) to manipulate windows with what they call 'gaze-controlled tab expose,' while there's speculation similar technology may be adopted by Apple. Apple has already purchased Tobii's eye-tracking hardware, and 'Whether these are for internal research only or for a future product, Apple is characteristically not saying.'"
Really? Is this really what we wanted??
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
/problem
DO NOT WANT.
Damn it, I guess this webcam built into my laptop has suddenly been rendered damned near completely useless.
Sent from your iPad.
The headline requested your interaction but as of post time has received no comment.
This only works if everyone has a webcam that is sending feedback to the website. I can see how everybody on slashdot would like that.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
For porn :/
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
You'd have to have the web cam turned on. Who in their right mind leaves the web cam on while surfing the web?
Free Martian Whores!
Do-what-I-mean key. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer static displays without movement when I am reading. Unless this technology really does what I mean, they better make it so that I can turn it off.
Yet another product that will fail. I am cross eyed no surgery will ever be able to straighten my eyes out enough for a computer to track corectly. Let alone what happens if you wear glasses. The refraction or in some cases polarized lens and bifocals will throw such setups into disarray.
What hapens if more than one person is looking at the screen? I forgot who but some one recently made camera with motion sensing that couldn't detect black people in less than perfect lighting. What happens if some is wearing a colored contact lens? Will that throw the system off?
These lab tests always seem to fail in the real world.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Is it just me, or am I the only one who won't use it just because they used the hackneyed "2.0" thing?
Come on, even a clumsy forced acronym like "READ IT" (READable Interactive Text) would be more explanatory, and wouldn't date it at circa 2010 for the rest of its product life.
I can see the fnords!
in combination with a bit of tape.
A great application for this would be as an overlay on glasses.
If I could get on-the-fly translations of shop-signs and menus projected on to my glasses, it would be awesome.
I could also see this as the next powerpoint whizz-bang animated presentation tool, and that doesn't make me quite as happy...
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
this would lead to great practical jokery when two webcam feeds get swapped. hey, that's not what i'm looking at! whoa, whoa, whoa!
I don't want to be tracked on how I'm reading something and skimming isn't always the best thing but to then fade out words they think that don't matter is just bad, imo, and some times those seemingly irrelevant words can change the context of things.
I'm going to set mine to always dim the words ambidextrous, quagmire, and porcelain.
All they need to do is show an attractive male and female swimsuit model and measure which one my eyes spend more time on, and they've pretty reliably established my sexual preferences.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Seriously, does the software understand the differences between:
Reading an article but being distracted by the ad on the side of the page ...
Reading an article but being distracted by the redhead walking by
Reading an article but I have a lazy eye that doesn't track
Reading an article but my ADD kicks in and
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
Hasn't this been done somewhere for security. IE: only what your eyes are looking at are in focus. Therefore anyone looking over your shoulder wouldn't be able to read a paragraph on your screen.
Sounds like it could get a lot of us in trouble. I'm picturing "important" meetings where I'm called into the boss' office to give an opinion on something. No more sitting down in front of his screen and practicing my "oh yeah, that's great" voice.
Because BUY COCA COLA at the moment people often don't even look at advertisements and may even BUY COCA COLA mentally block out areas of the screen such as sidebars and banners. With this technology, advertisers can require BUY COCA COLA that whenever someone is reading a text and not looking BUY COCA COLA at advertisements at all then every five minutes the words that you are a few milliseconds away from BUY COCA COLA reading will change to reflect an advertising message.
Everything else seemed like a b!tch. I wouldn't want words to come fading in and out, pictures appearing only if I stare at a word (new Google Adsense?), or compound words splitting just because I paused for a while. No.
In soviet Russia, God creates you!
Seriously, I'm already annoyed by those "auto-linkers" which put those stupid mouseover bubbles links on semi-random words on some websites, I don't need more tech that tries to "help me" read content.
Is it just me or is that just a horrible video? Especially for Slashdotters.. If they would simply recut it, showing each of the useful features (bookmarking, skimming, translation, read-aloud) it would have made me interested. It sounds like a cool research project but right now the smarminess of the video has me running for the hills.
(And what's with the first link? Seems to be to some totally different topic, but maybe that's my bad for trying to read the article)
The first thing I thought of with this is how annoying the advertisements on websites that use this will be... Just imagine, the ads can then *always* be in your viewing area! *shudder*
I want this for my MOUSE. No, seriously. I'd pay decent money for this.
If the tracking gets that good, you could put three buttons just below the spacebar:
- Left Click
- Track
- Right Click
When I push the TRACK button, I want the cursor to go where I'm looking. Then I can click on the right or left mouse buttons as desired, and even hold the mouse button to select, etc.
The reason I would want a "Track" button is to keep the thing from tracking the cursor with my typing all the time. That would drive me as batty as the suggested application of this tech.
I suppose you could do a right-wink/left-wink thing as long as you made it so the eye needed to be closed for longer than an ordinary blink, but having. :)
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
...and we are all slapped with sexual harassment lawsuits for staring at the headlines' tits. Starting now, I am going to only read internet postings with crossed eyes: take that, technology!
Text has been around for over 7000 years, and we're only now approaching version 2.0? And people thought Debian had a long release cycle...
This comment is for entertainment purposes only. Any similarity to real insight or information is purely coincidental.
Obviously, these are various ideas that may not turn up to be useful in practice. But it shows that an e-reader has the potential to actually enhance the reading experience as opposed to just being a less heavy version of the book. That's just amazing!
Regardless, I liked the fade-out-fill-words idea. I want a button for that in my browser!
PS: To all the nay-sayers: this is research (DFKI is a German research instution), it's not some company trying to sell you a product. Give them some slack.
"We got this new Text 2.0 and stuff and now my computer crashes every time I look at it. Like, seriously. Every time. I think I have a virus."
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
I want web pages to stand still unless I type or click.
GUIs that respond to mouse position alone, with
- pop ups
- hover text
- raise/lower windows
- flashes or color changes
make me mental.
A GUI that responded to my eye movements...<shudder>...
popUp( "you looked away from this messages; please look back");
playSound("annoyingBleep.mid");
setPicture("porno_woman.jpg");
);
onLookAt( popUp(" Please click the link");
playSound("click+click+click.mid");
setPicture("Advert.jpg");
);
---
It will happen It will happen, save us
---
Internet Advertising Feed @ Feed Distiller
I want the text. The FRAKKING TEXT. Please.
I don't want to go to a link for an overview of some cool product, hardware, or process, and get a VIDEO. that I can't skim, can't read quietly at my desk, can't even read at lunch because it is too noisy to hear the soundtrack.
The Web 2.0 is going frakking nuts over features. When do we get the next .com bubble burst so we can get rid of these people?
And this idea has NOTHING TO DO WITH MY PREFERENCES. It has everything to do with tracking my eyeballs and figuring out how to manipulate me even better than they do now.
I know it's retro, but most of the time, when I'm reading something, EFFECTS get in the way. Just give me the text.
And I want it when I want it. Think you can predict when I'm bored? It won't be a hard decision for you if this crap comes to my screen. You'll sense I'm bored about 12 seconds in, and I won't change until I navigate way from your junk.
Arrghhh.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Unimportant words also fade out while you're skimming the text...
So... if text is fluffy... then why would you read it?
Isn't column-filling text an artifact of the pre-internet age?
The article summarized and quoted is not linked in the summary. The actual article here.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
We are one step closer to this: http://xkcd.com/462/
I already hate when webpages open menus, just because I moved my mouse over them (and not even a damn delay - they open instantly, god damn it!) and I also hated mouse gestures, because I don't want the OS to interfere with what I'm doing, just because I coincidentally moved the mouse in a certain way...
that's why I think this (and also the mind-writing from earlier today) are very very VERY bad ideas... some people might find them exciting, but that's just people who haven't been around computers long enough to know all the (similar) bad ideas, that already existed before...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Not that it would detect everyone, but I do feel like I tend to move the mouse close to a story I'm reading.
If you could tell the story closest to the middle of the page you might be able to infer it from scrolling as well. I tend to read about 1/3+ down the page. My head naturally rests so that I have to look up a bit to look at say the "slahsdot" logo on this page.
Found this when I was looking for a way to make eye-tracking window focus changes because I was tired of typing into the wrong window ;)
All that said - TFA points to the thought controlled computing article source, and I can't (won't) view video at work -- maybe TFV addresses this?
From now on, all of those 30 page documents that you click through can make sure you read every last word of themselves. How fantastic!
and text has to be pretty large for this to function adequately. Tracking progress through a text, sure - but the current state is that we can't tell EXACTLY where the user is looking (the size of the red dot in the video is extremely misleading). We can narrow it down to about the size of a quarter on the screen. Likely not enough for "on the fly translations" of single words but definitely enough for some simpler things (like tracking which ads you're looking at).
You want to engage the user? You want heroines gamers will care about? Two words: eye contact.
No no no hell no. Just because I'm not looking at the text doesn't mean I'm not reading it. Humans have this thing, see, it's call periphery vision.
The PS3 does this (as of it's latest "upgrade"). It presents you with a list of items-- say menu options, or a list of songs you've loaded. Then, after a few seconds, it FADES OUT all options that aren't highlighted. So if you want to see all the options at once, you have to to constantly jog the cursor up and down. (And to make it even more annoying, if the title of the option is longer than the display width, it'll start to autoscroll after a delay-- and that delay is longer than the fade-out delay).
UTF-8: There and Back Again
...will KNOW whether or not I read that remark of hers about going shopping together.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I DON'T want to be treated as a frakkin' pair of eyeballs, dammit !
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
You always used to put the random words in bold type, not dim italics!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
How about we teach people to do purely visual (1000 wpm+) reading, so they can teach themselves what words mean, before we start putting shiny nonsense in the way of their comprehension?
....by the sheer amount of either revulsed or declining comments here. Proof that the /. crowd is still having common sense.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
All this time and nobody came up with:
In Soviet Russia, Web Page READS YOU!!!
This I do not need. It's worse than Flash.
but you can fade out the unimportant parts for me. I hope it doesn't dumben me.
As if I would give a website constant access to my webcam. I don’t even give that to friends, because, who looks presentable when sitting in front of his PC alone? ^^
Protip: Look at chatroulette for the answer. ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I'm not reading the article, I'm not reading any of the comments and any website that implements this will go in the hosts file to my local web server (on a non-standard port) that serves up a custom "Warning, retards built this site" message in whatever format requested - html, png, gif, or anything else. My webcam is turned around backwards to point at the undecorated, antique white walls and if they can think they see a face or eyeballs in that it's not going to be moving.
It's rare that I refuse a technology outright, but my eyeballs move for a reason and you're not going to track them, even if it helps me. Call me a luddite, but no no and fuck no.
some people might find them exciting, but that's just people who haven't been around computers long enough to know all the (similar) bad ideas, that already existed before...
Would that be the GNOME Usability Experts?
Yes. Everyone who uses the “mouse over = selection, single click = execution” UI scheme, is completely mental, and should be forbidden from ever designing an UI again by court order.
But on a related note: It’s interesting how KDE4 chose to take every single of those bad choices from Windows. The only ones they added are an even more annoying fiddly disaster. (Plasma configuration UI, I’m looking at you. Especially at the Cashew, which has its own plasmoid called “ihatethecashew”.)
Dolphin is the prime example. It looks as if they chose the most annoying and least usable way for any single option in there. Which perfectly reminded me of how I had do the same in Windows 95 (!) by going trough all the option and fixing them.
In fact I even plan on writing a KDE4antiDAU, just as I had a XPantiDAU and a custom CD for the old Windows line. (DAU = dümmster anzunehmender User = common German term, meaning “dumbest assumable user” [literally] or “worst user scenario” [meaning. Stemming from the worst case scenario for nuclear reactors.])
I should make a funny video series, mocking bad UI designs, in the style of Ricky Gervais and Lewis Black. ^^
KDE4 will definitely fill a season there. But Gnome, Windows and OS X too.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
It's been a while since I read Diamond Age, but wasn't there a human behind the technology?
That aside, I think this is pretty cool tech. I keep waiting for the eye trackers to check interpupillary distance so that focus works within rendered 3D enviros. But this is a nice start. I just hope they remove that awful background music from the production version.
We like tech. What we don't like is the increasing aggression used to cause as much pain as possible with tech. Possibly wore is the snarky "Disney" presentation of tech whose next immediate application is more State control.
News: India holds the Guinness Record for the spiciest pepper.
Phobe-News: The US miliary has announced plans to "weaponize it".
It's like an instinct gone awry:
I'll make you a deal. Name any nifty new piece of tech and I'll churn out a way to make you miserable with it. Fair?
It's like a social meta-virus. "Big Brother" and friends is almost a social drug.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I often read texts with a television on nearby. So I would look away quite a lot.
It would be handier when in stead of following my eyes it would follow some kind of puck I had next to the keyboard. It's not clear to me how the system can distinguish between translate this, show word break etcetera. Maybe a button on the puck would help. It could show a menu and I would choose from a list.
I hope I can patent it!
Cheers,
Gerie.
Unimportant words also fade out while you're skimming the text, and ads automatically appears if you glance away. It can pronounce the words you're reading, and reading certain words can trigger the appearance of ads or even video ads, noisy ads or noisy video ads, almost like the truly interactive ads in Minority Report. 'With the help of an eye tracker, Text 2.0 follows your progress and presents tampon ads just in time,' the researchers explain in a video.
Fixed that for you.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
NoScript FTW! *
... Watches another episode of Family Guy.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
i never lesion java script may help for developing robo.using artificial intelligence we make artificial robo. Top Grade Acai
I hate the name. But this could be really useful for schools. Possibly learning to speed read, or just learning to read itself.
Eyetracking for changing monitor screens, and/or window focus, would be pretty cool. ...
especially if it could be enabled/disabled quickly
I am dyslexic and I could see how this could really help me. I also have certain eye tracking issues and maybe this would help with that too, since I am always loosing my place and have a hard time moving from one line to the next. Plus, I can't skim at all, so I might actually be able to with this technology. Anyway, I have been in vision therapy for sometime now and a lot of the exercises I do would be augmented by this system and could potentially provide a synergistic effect. Good luck! :)