Windows 8 can be used via a mouse and keyboard and also via a touch screen with its Metro user interface. Now a company has released a video showing Windows 8 being used by a combination of a track pad and a person"s eyes. The eye-tracking device itself is called, naturally, Gaze, which was created by a Sweden-based company called Tobii.
The company has released a video showing Gaze in action on the developer preview version of Windows 8. For notebooks that have a touch screen, Gaze does still require the use of a trackpad. The device itself sits below the notebook"s screen. For launching applications in Windows 8"s Metro interface, you simply look at the application you want to activate and then touch the touch pad to launch it. Gaze can also be used in web browsing on Windows 8 to simply look at a link and then use the touchpad to click on the link.
The video looks cool but, as always, having a cool video is not the same as seeing the technology work in a real world enviroment. Gaze will be shown at CES 2012 next week and AllThingsD.com reports that Microsoft will actually have Gaze-based Windows 8 notebook at their booth. Tobii says it wants to work with notebook makers to have Gaze ship with their Windows 8 laptops.