One of the beauties of the Internet era is the data we can see on direct consumer behaviors. Heat maps and website analytics can allow us to see how consumers actually act.

However, unconscious behaviors, the kind that lead to actions taken on a site or app, continue to elude us. RealEye wants to change that.

The RealEye software uses “webcam eye-tracking software you are able to follow your user’s eyes and see exactly what they see while looking at your website.”

This way, you can see what people study (and don’t study) before they engage an action on a specific page.

Because this tech is tied to a webcam, you aren’t limited to testing on web pages. According to a comment from creator Adam Cellary, “you can test layouts (png/jpeg) and based on results – correct your designs!”

The company utilizes a vetted pool of testers to review sites with the software, and the data is sent back to customers for their analysis. Customers pay for frequency of access to that test group.

Now, some of you may be thinking, “that’s a lot of sensitive data on someone’s face being recorded. What about the privacy issues associated with that?”

Thankfully, the product doesn’t collect recordings.

Instead, it records behavior as data points. The point on the page where users look is logged on an x/y axis, along with time spent looking at that particular coordinate. The app also tracks scroll offset.
Because this data is set up as raw numbers, privacy is protected and the data can be easily migrated into a heat map format.

A/B testing is the most obvious application. If you want to see which product page layout leads to a better conversion rate, RealEye provides some of the most accurate data on how consumers perceive each design.

That’s because users can’t “cheat” this kind of testing.

Using the eye mapping data, you can see which page features instantly draw in your users.

Right now, the most effective testing results are found on desktop. Because mobile screens are so small, it is hard to find meaningful variety in user behavior using those results.

One would imagine this will change down the road.

If you’re already running everything in your business though Slack, you might want to keep an eye on Ottspott, a startup currently registering early adopters in beta.

Ottspott is a phone system that runs inside Slack. You don’t even have to own a telephone set – you can make and receive all of you calls through your computer browser, without leaving Slack.

No coding or technical skills are required. Sign up takes less than a minute, and your entire team is integrated into the system – no need to invite team members or have them sign up individually. You simply select a phone number from a list of 9,000 cities in 40 countries, and Slack takes care of the rest. Included are major tech cities such as Dublin, Amsterdam, London, San Francisco, and New York. Ottspott is a great tool for global businesses that want to keep local phone numbers for their customers.

Ottspott can help you with internal communications, as well as calling clients and customers.

You can label calls for efficiency (for example “urgent” or “sales”), and you can have calls automatically forwarded to the appropriate member of your team. Your Gmail contacts are integrated with Ottspott to provide caller ID. You can also create folders of contacts to share with your team. Ottspott can even facilitate conference calls using Slack’s slash commands.

Ottspott notifies you instantly when you receive or miss a call, or when you get a new voicemail. You can then click-to-call from these notifications or from within voicemail, so you don’t need to dial the number.

You can also use OttSpott’s analytic metrics to measure your sales team’s phone performance.

And what if you’re away from your computer? No problem. Ottspott has a built-in voicemail system, and can also forward calls to your cell phone or landline.

Doxxing — the act of publishing someone’s personal information online for malicious purposes—is a constantly growing threat for anyone with an online presence. While platforms such as Twitter have made it easy to report this specific form of harassment, other social media powerhouses like Facebook have yet to make the leap. It’s perplexing.

Doxxing can take on many forms, from posting someone’s online contact details all the way to placing their address and other highly sensitive information (e.g., a credit card number) in a public environment. The basic premise is usually the same: to cause the recipient of the doxxing stress, pressure them into moving or deleting their account, and/or prevent them from continuing to use their platform in an organic manner.

The consequences of doxxing can differ depending on how rabid the doxxer’s following is, but it isn’t unheard of for conflicts that result in doxxing to escalate into real-world harassment or violence.

Doxxing may seem like a problem reserved for celebrities and other high-traffic accounts, but the truth is that it can happen to anyone with an online presence. In fact, doxxing has become so common that some sites or services include a specific doxxing option when reporting a post for harassment.

Twitter, for example, allows you to report a tweet that “includes private information” as harassment.

Unfortunately, the inclusion of the option to report doxxing on some platforms creates a notable absence thereof on other comparable sites.

Facebook and Instagram (owned by Facebook) — both of which are ground zeroes for some of the most egregious forms of harassment — do not allow users to report posts for doxxing; instead, users must mark a post as inappropriate or a generic form of harassment and hope that the Facebook Gods recognize it for what it is.

As doxxing continues to impact both virtual and real lives of victims, Facebook and other companies which have yet to follow Twitter’s example will need to pick up the slack if they want to remain relevant in the cybersecurity realm. And they must put effort into stopping doxxing, lest they be complicit in the nefarious acts.

Doxxing may seem like it doesn’t affect enough people to warrant a full feature, but people who encounter doxxing certainly deserve better than a catch-all “harassment” option when reporting doxxing abuse online.