Brit turns Comp Sci coursework into $100k glad-rags search biz A computer science graduate who used her final-year coursework on image processing to establish a startup has netted a $100k (£60k) prize. Jenny Griffiths, who studied at Bristol University, became interested in computer vision during the second year of her master's degree - and in her fourth year she wrote software to …
I imaging that Google will snap this up. Most of their good stuff is bought in and EVERYTHING they have is to sell adverts. Search is important to them.
You can't sensibly search for images on t'Webs currently unless they are labelled, Though recently Google has been using the surrounding text to "guess", sometimes with hilarious results.
When i did my degree, i was told in no uncertain terms at the start of the course that anything i created as part of the course belonged to the university. I had to sign things to that effect and was given warnings about using university resources for anything personal and commercial.
I wonder if there was anything similar there?
...then you should be able to look at the project write up at the research library of the University. Many will also sell copies if you ask them.
I would suggest that if it is a trade secret, there must be more in the product than was in the final year project, or else anybody would be able to see it. A trade secret that becomes known via a legitimate means then has no further protection in law.
No, if she produced it on her own systems it entirely belongs to her. If she produced it with university help they'll probably both own a share in it. Universities won't give away information which is commercially sensitive, when that university can profit from its work, and nor should it in my opinion.
Glad it's not being immediately weaponised but looks to actually genuinely be able to help people. Going to be hard on brick-and-mortar stores, though, and since we've still very few options to pay anonymously and electronically both, it'll still be a net loss of privacy. But in this case it's not directly due to the new fob, at least.
And it has an unusually clear and simple business model for a "digital" start-up, for a change.
Someone actually does something halfway clever and all the comments are negative? Jealous, some?
Thought: Maybe, if the lady is an MSc candidate she's, I dunno, clever enough to think things through, legally?
Another thought: If you had an idea so good you thought might be bought out by one of the e-giants, would you work towards making sure that didn't happen or keep your options open?
As for me: No second-guessing her intentions or methodology, just a "well done that woman" and hope it makes her enough money she'll never have to work on things she doesn't want to. After all, she's got an education that needs paying for, and it obviously works and is worth what it cost.
I can't see a single negative comment, unless your definition of negative is "anything but mindless adoration". They all seemed positive to me, people were just discussing the ins & outs of starting a business of the back of a uni project & so on.
If this story was on some other sites, the mere fact of being about a female would've provoked a slew of "Tits or GTFO" comments & maybe some "jokes" about rape.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
