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This is sorta scary- billboards that count eyeballs, but that just means someone is going to make an IR array at the right frequency, point it at these cameras and you'll see a whole new type of click fraud...
Google unveiled an eye-counting video camera Tuesday (May 8) that could enable the company to extend its highly successful online business model to brick-and-mortar advertisers.The Eyebox was developed by Xuuk Inc. (Kingston, Ontario).
Using its PageRank technology, Google (Mountain View, Calif.) has been able to collect revenue from advertisers based on the number of ads on which people are clicking.
Now with the Eyebox, Google can determine which billboards or products people are looking at in mall corridors or on store shelves, and count them in the same manner that Google counts clicks for online ads.
The Eyebox consists of a palm-sized video camera surrounded by infrared light-emitting diodes and a Universal Serial Bus interface. Software running on an attached computer can determine whether someone is looking at the camera by recognizing the "red eye" spot, which only appears when a viewer is looking directly at the camera.
EETimes.com - Google unveils tracking tech for in-store eyes - [via] Link & more.
Minority Report, anyone?
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i bet it doesn't count eyes covered by sunglasses.
pretty worthless in some places.
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very true. would have to be for indoor advertising only.
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So how many square inches of the world are left that don't have some kind of advertising revenue extraction scheme attached to them?
I'm really paranoid, so I want to mount one of these on the back of my hat so I can tell how many people are REALLY watching me! A woman can wear it as a necklace and find out if that guy they're talking to is just staring at their chest any chance he gets, men can get them installed in their belt buckles to see if all that toilet paper stuffed in their pants actually draws more attention, teachers can finally stop students from cheating on tests, etc...
I guess when someone hooks one of these up to a dart gun or laser we'll begin to understand their full potential. I have faith in the Makers that an eyeball detector detector/scrambler will be created soon...
For google searches without the ads, use this scraper:
http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm
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Wal-Mart has been using these for over a decade in their mock store to determine where to best place products on shelves. So google is spending all of its money to just invent old tech?
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Aw, google's ads are so unobtrusive as-is, why we gotta scrape em out? Just deal with it...
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"Google unveils tracking tech for in-store eyes"
This isn't a Google product, it is only mimicking the Google Ad-words approach to advertising.
I looked it up, and it was just an error. Google has nothing to do with it.
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