Attention Inventors! Five Gadgets We Want

Considering the wonders already introduced here in the early 21st century, it would seem all the great gadgets have already been invented.

Wrong again, generational tech elitist. If history teaches us anything (and it usually does), there are always plenty of inventions yet to be invented.

And I don't mean obvious gadgets like Star Trek-like tech such as voice control, phasers, or the best potential gadget of them all, the transporter – damn you Werner Heisenberg! Maybe more like James Bond's Q. I don't know about you, but I'd love a personal jet pack, but I also can imagine massive mid-air traffic jams.

If you're an inventor, feel free to steal any of these better mousetraps from which to make the world beat a path to your door. Just make sure I get one of the first of your Edison-like gadgets, and maybe a modicum of credit.

iPad universal A/V remote accessory

There are several accessories to turn your iPhone into a universal remote for your home theater (I'll be reporting on the NewKinetix Re and the VooMote in a couple of weeks).

A great idea, except you've now trapped your iPhone in this ungainly universal remote accessory. Plus, you have to charge your iPhone sometime, and this charging usually happens while you're home watching TV, which means your iPhone is not available for universal remote control usage.

But if you have one, you likely have your iPad on your lap while you're couch potatoing.

What we need is an accessory that adds infrared capability to the iPad combined with a universal remote control app.

Now instead of putting down my iPad to search for the TV remote (yes, I'm that lazy), I could use the iPad I'm already holding to change the channel, raise or lower the volume, access my DVR list, etc.

Driver's license card reader

New York State driver's licenses have a bar code on their flip side. I'm not sure what it's used for, but I'd love to see an in-car driver's license reader.

First and foremost, your license would now function as a key, which means thieves would have a harder time stealing your vehicle. It could also enable a number of other security and safety features, such as tracking the car and/or your location (by you or loved ones, by big brother only in case of emergency).

But a driver's license reader's most important function would be to keep criminals off the road. Courts suspend millions of licenses each day, but what keeps these felons from driving anyway? Not a week goes by without a report of someone driving on a suspended license killing someone on the road – here's one from earlier this month, for instance.

Make these proven bad drivers buy and install a driver's license reader in their car as part of their fine, and code the license as "suspended" so it cannot be used to start ANY reader-equipped vehicle – which, one day in a perfect world, could be all vehicles.

Bluetooth repeater

More and more homes are cell phone-only, and more and more landline models can be used with a Bluetooth earpiece such my Plantronics Discover 975. Except, if your phone is in one room on one side of your house or apartment, and you're at the other end, you won't hear your phone ring or, if you do, you gotta make like O.J. Simpson hurdling through an airport (before bloody gloves not fitting, then acquitting) to answer it.

You could wear a Bluetooth headset around the house (perfectly acceptable in private, pretentious-looking in public). But with only a 30-foot range in optimal conditions, you won't be able to answer a call in the basement when your phone is charging upstairs in the kitchen.

What we need is a Bluetooth repeater, little nodules you stick in varying locations around your abode to relay the Bluetooth signal so it can reach your earpiece.

C'mon, Plantronics, get on it!

Air conditioner muffler

There's no such thing as a "quiet" window air conditioner, especially ones priced below $200 that most of us buy. And that incessant "mmmmmmmmm" sits right in your hearing's mid-range frequencies, which means it drowns out the dialog on my TV. Do I turn up the TV and further deafen myself? Or turn off the AC and roast? Not exactly a Sophie's Choice – maybe more a Seinfeld's choice – but still annoying.

So what we need is…something…to muffle the AC hummmmmmm. I have no idea how it would work – I leave that to the budding mechanical engineers out there.

iPhone desktop DECT phone accessory

This would look like a regular cordless DECT expansion landline phone such my Panasonic KX-TG9381, except for a built-in iPhone dock. When you dock your iPhone, the cordless desktop phone can now access your iPhone's cell signal.

So, if someone calls your iPhone, the iPhone DECT phone – and all of the system's wireless extensions around the house – ring, just like a normal landline phone. And it's charging my iPhone as well. And maybe it connects to PC to allow it to sync my iPhone with iTunes and, maybe, let me make and answer Skype calls with it.

Just my 'magination, running away with me…

You folks have any new gadget ideas (and keep it clean)?