Microsoft's incubation labs keep the innovation fires burning

Microsoft -- always in search of ways to prove it's an innovator and not just an imitator -- is continuing to rely on its various "Labs" incubators for new services and components that it can roll up into new and existing paid products.

One of those incubators, Liv eLabs (a cooperative effort between Microsoft researchers and Windows Live experts) pushed out an update this week of "Listas," a user-editable, list-sharing tool.

Microsoft released a first test version of Listas in October. The January 2008 Listas update adds support for new community lists, task lists, recently created lists and top users. The update also improves printing support, history and version management, according to Microsoft.

(Based on the user feedback on the Listas' site, testers seem unsure what Listas is meant to do and why it is supposedly useful, however.)

Meanwhile, the Microsoft adLabs team (a joint effort between Microsoft Research and the adCenter team) rolled out on January 9 the final version of the adCenter add-in for Excel 2007. The add-in allows advertisers to do keyword search inside of Excel. The adLabs team developed the front-end for the plug-in, which Microsoft demonstrated in April 2007.

Any readers out there looked at Live Labs and/or adLabs' projects? What's your opinion: Worthwhile? Useful? Or not so much?