Browsers are fast enough to stream the x-y location of your mouse pointer back to the server. It should be easy enough to collect the pointer locations of all users on a web page, and display these as firefly trails on the page itself.

I'm not sure what this would be useful for (halfbakery, after all!) But it should:

Potentially show the main points of interest on a site, along with seeing its popularity "live", and...

...you probably would never feel alone on a popular page, even though you have no idea who your firefly neighbours are.
-- not_only_but_also, Sep 02 2011

your world of text http://yourworldoftext.com/home/
"infinite grid of text editable by any visitor. The changes made by other people appear on your screen as they happen." [Eubalaena, Sep 02 2011]

Part 1 of the idea. http://javascript.i...se-coordinates.html
Shows the Client-Side Javascript needed for this. [monojohnny, Sep 03 2011]

Easy enough then to use my 100,000-strong botnet to cooperatively send Viagra spam advertising firefly trails to popular web pages
-- hippo, Sep 02 2011


To solve hippo's problem, perhaps specific hardware can be used. A USB mouse with a "share" button. The software would be installed with the mouse so only the kids on shared facebook pages can use it, but the spam advertising companies cannot, because it goes thru a server anonymising the input and making it worthless for spam companies.
-- pashute, Sep 02 2011


//Viagra spam advertising firefly trails//
hippo here generating his own spam message headers.
-- calum, Sep 02 2011


I once came across a website which I have since been unable to find, but it was a seemingly infinitely large page upon which you could type anything whatsoever and so could anyone else who was on the site. I'm pretty sure the page refreshed quick enough that you could observe other people altering the page.

also this would be awesome, the internet would be a little less solitary
-- Eubalaena, Sep 02 2011


Link to facebook/gmail and you could see which pointers belong to women and which ones are men's. You could even display brief statistics about each one, like planes on a control tower's radar screens.
-- phundug, Sep 02 2011


The internet needs *something* like this.
-- rcarty, Sep 02 2011



random, halfbakery