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.'"

Comments

In Soviet Russia Webpage reads you?

[Tiger4]

Really? Is this really what we wanted??

Re:In Soviet Russia Webpage reads you?

[tomhudson]

Corey Hart has the solution: "I wear my sunglasses at night ..."

Re:In Soviet Russia Webpage reads you?

[Eladith]

Text that can understand the intentions of the reader and respond accordingly could be quite useful, for example by explaining some portion of text in more detail. Unfortunately intelligent enough content production system required for such is probably way harder to implement than ads that follow the reader's gaze.

Re:In Soviet Russia Webpage reads you?

[Mindcontrolled]

Ah, Slashdot. How exactly did we come from a tech community always fascinated by new developments to this new shiny home of the technophobes? Nothing against a proper discussion about the pros and cons of a new subject, but why is every other thread these days swamped with mindless "Do not want!!", "Not going to work", "But I am a cross-eyed eskimo midget, this won't work for me so it is shit" and more and more and more crap like that. Yeah, I get it for this specific discussion - cat and STDIN/STDOUT is all a real man needs to handle data. I'll get off your fucking lawn now.

Re:In Soviet Russia Webpage reads you?

[shadowrat]

eye tracking is cool, but the description of this use of it sounds lame. Most of this functionality already exists in the user's head. I already form visions of what i'm reading. i already ignore words that i am not looking at. The bookmark part when i look away sounds mildly useful, but the rest sounds like the kind of overzealous anticipatory systems we have today.

my iphone constantly switches to landscape if i so much as pivot while looking at it, but refuses to flip when i legitimately turn it. Predictive text and autocompletion on my phone and in office suites screw me constantly by replacing legitimate words with what the application thinks i really meant. I'm leary of any computer system that tries to anticipate my desires or predict my actions. To my experience they are usually wrong and a hinderence more than a help.

That said, i do think eye tracking is cool. And i don't know what this research will ultimately yeild. If they discover that this paradigm sucks, it's time well spent.

Re:In Soviet Russia Webpage reads you?

[Mindcontrolled]

See, that is what I meant - this is good. These are arguments, this is what I come here for. And I agree, especially with your last paragraph. Yes, most of the current anticipatory systems do indeed suck. But as you said, the paradigm isn't tested to the end, and with improving predictive power, it might become a very useful concept. Ahh, well, it might be just my nostalgia, but I have the feeling that we are blanketed with one-liner brainfarts these days, drowning most of the informed discussion.

In the immortal words of cats and dogs everywhere.

[Em Emalb]

DO NOT WANT.

Damn it, I guess this webcam built into my laptop has suddenly been rendered damned near completely useless.

It can only work if everyone has a webcam

[Attila Dimedici]

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.

This will do wonders ...

[jsnipy]

For porn :/

Re:This will do wonders ...

[DIplomatic]

Hopefully it will fade out the irrelevant parts of the porn that I'm not paying attention to. This could make my jerking off twice as productive! (/sarcasm)

Re:This will do wonders ...

[2obvious4u]

Or it could prove you're gay because you keep glaring at cock.

Re:This will do wonders ...

[Kozz]

You mean like this? http://kottke.org/07/03/men-look-at-crotches

Re:Duct tape

[OzPeter]

/problem

I think your right on this, but we may need to crowd source the job of finding these German researchers in order to apply the Duct Tape so they don't ever do this sort of research again.

Do companies pay attention to details

[peragrin]

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.

Re:Do companies pay attention to details

[Dumnezeu]

These lab tests always seem to fail in the real world.

True, but the concept is still pretty cool! What if you apply it to something else, like a "smart" book? What if the text automatically changes the appearance so that people with eye problems won't need to wear their glasses or will be able to read when even their glasses couldn't help. Those "details" you speak of are actually details. As a product, in its current state, Text 2.0 will fail... but don't forget, there are still many people with lots of money out there who are interested in these weird projects. All one has to see is the potential of a product, not the product its self.

Re:Do companies pay attention to details

[517714]

These lab tests always seem to fail in the real world.

Until they succeed.

Re:Could work great with glasses

[tomhudson]

If I could get on-the-fly translations of shop-signs and menus projected on to my glasses, it would be awesome.

No - it means you'll always look at the trnaslations and never learn what the underlying words were.

Also, their "skimming" thing is not going to work at all for speed-readers, or people who read out-of-sequence.

Re:Nothing "2.0"

[Shin-LaC]

It's just you. The rest of us won't use it because it's a bad idea.

Re:Serious invasion of privacy

[Yvan256]

And for an added bonus, the software can tell you if you're a breasts man or a legs man.

As Seinfeld once said: why would I want legs? I've got legs.

Text 2.0?

[rugatero]

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...

Oh, no

[physburn]

onLookAway(
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

YAY! more possibilities to accidentally do things!

[AlgorithMan]

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...