Microsoft is working on technology that will spy on you in your own home, watching your body language and face and listening to your voice for cues about your mood and emotional state.

But would you want to install such a device in your home?

Maybe you already have.

Microsoft's technology works via Kinect for Xbox 360, the company's popular motion-detection gaming peripheral.

Microsoft this month filed a patent application for a method of " Targeting Advertisements Based on Emotion."

The idea is that users would install Kinect for the fun and games. But when they're not playing, Kinect will continue to watch everything they do. It will know when they're laughing and crying, slumping or beaming.

Microsoft wants to combine this data with information collected as people conduct searches with Bing and surf the Web with Internet Explorer. Using that data, the system will build an emotional profile of a user that will enable it to deliver ads "with the highest monetization values to the users that are emotionally compatible," according to the patent application.

Microsoft's plans are merely at the patent application stage. Other major companies are much closer to implementing emotion-sensing technology.

Feeling social?

Facebook has acquired the face-recognition startup Face.com, a company whose software can scan a photograph and identify who's in it, based on user tagging.

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