

Cheap Eye Tracking Using Mouse Tracking - kirubakaran
http://glinden.blogspot.com/2008/01/cheap-eyetracking-using-mouse-tracking.html

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mixmax
the idea is great but the implementation not so. Certainly there is a
correlation between where the user points his mouse and where he looks - but
it is pretty small. Especially when pictures and multimedia are involved
people tend to move their mouse out of the way.

With a high enough quality webcam and flash (which will allow you to stream
from the cam) it should be possible, not easy but possible, to get pictures of
the eyes and track their movement. The cons of this approach are:

1) you need to get the users permission to view captures from their cam -
major irritation and bad usability.

2) the software to anslyse the pictures is quite complex

3) the cam needs to be of a pretty good quality

4) It will be hard to determine the coordinates of the cam in relation to the
monitor, though it is probably possible to approximate it, since you can
assume that the user is staring at the screen his eye movement will be
confined to a square of space somewhere in front of him (the monitor). If data
is gathered for a while it should be possible to approximate where the screen
is in relation to the cam.

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jakewolf
How would you deal with users like me who shove their mouse to one side to
avoid distractions while reading?

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kirubakaran
As a mouse shover and a yc news reader, you would come under the demographic
that blocks ads probably even uses lynx. So, "they" would safely count you out
of their target audience. Ha!

