One area that the Occulus Rift would change for the better is education. You could be anywhere in the world and still attend classes at a university of you choice. You could also sit in a virtual classroom, with a virtual Einstein, and discuss a topic on physics and not get tired of it.

Architectural design. We are already using Oculus to communicate our design to our clients. Imagine putting surgeons into an operating room before it is built. Hospitals are expensive and complex, and oculus gives us another tool to make certain that the design is right.

It would make a 1A tool in controlling bomb disposal robots. cheers, he/

A fully immersive UI for almost anything: think a full recording studio inside a VR environment, i.e. a 100+ channel fully operational mixing desk (which would smash the issue with the current 'glass console' issue with digital recording systems). How about a 5k, 10k, 100k computer screen at whatever size you wish - i.e. unlimited screen real-estate for you computer. Then you can add interactive features such as grabbing an icon and pulling it out to reveal extra data/controls, two handed flipping of images to see data embedded in them, etc., etc.... The possibilities for computer UIs are unlimited when it comes to VR combined with voice recognition.

If someone could develop an experience that could help me "unlearn" my seemingly hard-coded dread of spiders. That would be fantastic. I don't want to be so afraid of them... but there's something in my mind that completely flips, I have no control over.

Hells yeah. But for a lot of these applications (including those suggested in the comments), the VR headset is not the most difficult part of the application and/or it assumes that the VR headset will have a resolution far, far beyond the current OR prototypes. What is the state of 360deg, 3D cameras? Surely a lot of the applications (movies, porn, sports, virtual tourism etc) depend on this technology and I've not heard much about its development.

What about Work? work from home, meetings in VR, viewing VR files. cities in VR, Realtor online house walk through files, vr files of entire operations or plants, with robot/avatars that could be logged into and used by a multitude of employees.
Imagine your at home and suddenly you get an emergancy notice from work or lab. Confirm with a VR robot before leaving.

Ancient landmark tourism.
I just want to walk through a almost accurate Rome, Pompei, or Peking form the past, Athens while stopping to look up at Mount Olympus.
For many people who love history, this could really be the ultimate fantasy....and a beautiful experience, no need for aliens or spacecraft...just a reliving of times past

what about VR touring ? I believe, the minute VR will be crystal clear and when on shelfs will be available A fair price sphere camera we shell see a begining of a web vr touring. What about live broadcast from all kind of Event scenes. what about programs of phobias therapies. well, endless parallel worlds are waiting for us in the very near puture with this quantum leap media. Thanks I'm here when it's happen.

One area where the Oculus could make a difference is travel. I was watching the following clip the other day and instantly thought of the Oculus Rift and how cool it would be to actually be able to see all around you while travelling across any country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpuosN-v6vE
Or, imagine the same thing on a plane. I can't wait to get my hands on the commercial version.
Carl