Would you like to see what others are watching or clicking?If you do,Atten.TV can help you.AttenTV offers people a visual depiction of the Web sites that others are clicking on, with the expectation that the browsing habits of those individuals will be interesting enough to watch, and even spur the "watchers" to check out some of the same sites.
AttenTV is still in its trial stage, but anyone can sign up for one or both parts of the service. One of its features is a Firefox browser plug-in, called the Attention Recorder, which monitors your clicks.The more interesting aspect, I think, is the client download, called Attentron, which enables you to watch what others have been watching. A bit creepy, right?Once downloaded, Attentron is pretty straightforward and easy to use. The application's viewer window provides a pop-out list of "sources," or channels of users. When a channel is selected, we can watch the clicking habits of a person, identified by his or her selected user name. Double-clicking a channel displays the sites a person has browsed, along with a time stamp for each. A revolving cube turns every few seconds to creatively display the home page of each site visited.
It's not exactly like sitting next to someone while they surf the Web, and nothing behind password-protected pages will be shown. (For instance, Attentron will display the Gmail or Bank of America home pages, but not e-mails or online bank records).
AttenTV broadcasters cannot specify who can or can't see their clickstreams, but they can choose when they broadcast their activities and when they don't. The broadcaster can also block specific sites from being broadcast--so it's less likely we'll see unsavory sites popping up on the AttenTV viewer.
