[FoRK] 10 years later, a research prototype becomes a product

[Ken Meltsner]

Software people, I think, have an unrealistic notion of how long it
takes for research to become products -- the Internet Bubble (s) had
many people going straight from a dissertation to a startup, but that
was (historically) unusual.  In fact, one friend told me that (approx)
"30 years later, we're still trying to catch up with Ivan Sutherland's
CAD dissertation."

Here's one more data point.

LiveScribe just announced (and will ship in March) a pen that will
automatically record what you write and what you hear at the same time
-- you can go to a specific spot in a long lecture by going back to
the notes you took at that time.  I've been waiting for something like
ever since I saw a research prototype at MIT's media lab:

http://www.media.mit.edu/speech/people/lisa/anb.html

Things have changed along the way -- the prototype used a digitizer
pad and a pad of paper coded to identify each page.  The product is
just a pen with a built-in audio recorder that uses special paper that
has been printed with positional information -- each sheet is unique
and the pen can identify where it is to some ridiculous precision.

It's the same technology used by other Anoto-based products such as
LeapFrog and various vertical market solutions.

http://www.anoto.com/?id=917


http://www.livescribe.com/smartpen/techspecs.html

Probably would be a good masters or so for a student to trace from the
original research concept to the product.  Even if there's no direct
connection (e.g. licensed technology from MIT to Anoto),  it would be
interesting to see how much LiveScribe was aware of or inspired by
prior art.

Ken Meltsner