My friend is turning his PhD research into a visualization app that creates images from the text you enter, he's at wordseye.com. Glad to hear that other people are excited about this area.

He's wasting his PhD, what possible use is there for wordseye?

I of course agree that you find problem before product, and find it unfortunate that many R&D shops and Universities are engineered the other way around. Luckily for my friend they've actually found success using this platform in education, specifically teaching autistic children, as well as in film (and animation) for storyboarding.

Harsh. What possible use it there for anything until a proper use is found?

A joke right? You don't find use for time, you find time for use.

Agreed.... Find Problem before product

Did you look at it? Not harsh, just realistic, take a look for yourself.

Meant to comment under this...

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuil