The Next Big IT Projects From the University Labs (infoworld.com)

snydeq writes: From unstructured data mining to visual microphones, academic labs are bringing future breakthrough possibilities to light, writes InfoWorld's Peter Wayner in his overview of nine university projects that could have lasting impact on IT. 'Open source programmers can usually build better code faster, often because they have bosses who pay them to build something that will pay off next quarter, not next century. Yet good computer science departments still manage to punch above — sometimes well above — their weight. While a good part of the research is devoted to arcane topics like the philosophical limits of computation, some of it can be tremendously useful for the world at large. What follows are nine projects currently under development at university labs that [could] have a broad impact on the world of computing.'

Comments

Know your strengths and weaknesses

[Tablizer]

I don't believe universities are very good at delivering "finished" products. Those with their heads deep in the arcane theory and bits often forget or don't know how to think about how regular users interact with products. Good UI's and feature packaging is hard to get right.

But, creating new algorithms or code libraries for those outside with a better "product sense" is certainly something universities can and have done well.