Bob
in February 2010 National Instruments acquired Ettus... a small company that sells SDR hardware that is widely used in academia
http://www.ettus.com/nihttp://www.ettus.com/productsThe Ettus hadware is similar to the SDR hardware thay many of the members of the AM Forum community are using/experimenting with. Until now, using this hardware has required expertise in Linux, a programming language called Python, and a high level SDR application programming toolkit called GNU radio. It takes a large commitment of time to get up to speed in using the Ettus hardware
http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/show/gnuradioNI's intention is to provide relatively easy-to-use drivers that will enable LabVIEW to work in conjunction with Ettus hardware to build SDR systems of varying complexity... and which will run on Windows.
The first generation of these drivers is currently in beta testing (by several university teams who work with SDR-based systems in educational and research contexts).
Hopefully, this will lead to more usable approach for people like us to create custom SDR configurations with features and functions that we can bring to life in software and hardware. Hopefully the open interface between NI's LabVIEW application software and the Ettus SDR hardware will encourage the emergence of compatible low cost SDR hardware from multiple sources.
Stu