High-tech billboards and plasma screens are becoming more than just eye-catching -- they're developing "eyes" of their own that can detect when people are looking and when they turn away.

"There's a huge market for knowing whether people are looking at an ad or not," says Vertegaal, an associate professor in human-computing interaction at Queen's. "It means you can start selling those ads by the eyeball."

"One of the things banks want to do is they want to minimize waiting time -- they don't want people waiting because it ticks them off," explains [Joshi], director of the MBA program at York University's Schulich School of Business.