I wear socks. Sometimes, when I put on my shoes, my socks won’t slide properly, so the socks squash my toes. Someone needs to invent a tool for putting on shoes that prevent sock-sliding toe-squashes.
You know what’s wrong, you just don’t know how to fix it. What things need to be invented in order to improve your quality of life?
A gel that you spread on your face and you don’t have to shave for a month or even longer.
I bloody hate shaving
A microcool for my warm beverages. Pop it in… 30 seconds…drinking cool stuff.
Some sort of “pay per use” wireless internet access at a reasonable cost. I can’t believe I am the only person who occasionally needs internet access when traveling, but not often enough to make a monthly plan worthwhile.
A successor to the mouse! (why in this day and age are we still moving a piece of plastic around a desk. Why are we not either touching the screen or using speech to control our computer?)
Total-immersion computer usage.
A device that somehow educates slack-jawed yokels in the same way that the internet-savy are. (How the fuck do people like GWB get elected… TWICE?! I can only conclude that the voters never get to see that which is out there that shows what an utter disaster it will be to vote for this person)
Someone should invent a billion pounds into my bank account.
I want a tiny, simple, cheap sticker that is powered by incoming radio signals like an RFID chip, but emits a noise when it’s hit by the right incoming radio signal. You’d buy a bunch of them with a little transmitter, like a remote. There’d be a button on the remote for each accompanying sticker. You could put the stickers on small commonly-lost objects like keys, flashlights, remotes, etc. Push the button, the sticker beeps, and you can track your missing object down.
If you work in the right kind of lab, liquid nitrogen serves this purpose quite well. 
Nanobots that remove plaque from arteries and veins and deposit it safely for disposal or removal; or micro-organisms that can do the same, perhaps using the plaque for fuel and excreting a safe byproduct that can be removed by the body.
You realize there’s a fatal design flaw in this scheme, don’t you?
Sticker falls off and you follow the signal only to find…a sticker?
My nominee: synthetic beta cells to regenerate the pancreas and reverse diabetes.
You lose the remote.
Something that will read my mind when I’m mentally writing stories so I don’t have to write them down.
Indeed. Would probably revolutionize the refrigerator too since ice makers would be come completely obsolete and said device would free up tons of space in your fridge.
IIRC, a long time back someone suggested this calling it a “macrowave” which a lot of dopers found pretty ingenious.
Because fingerprints on a monitor obscure your vision. You don’t want a mouse (And forget voice control software, I’ve used it, it works, but can you imagine what it’d be like to be in a cubefarm with people talking to their computers everytime they wanted them to do something?), get a trackball or touch pad.
Boeing uses Borg-like devices to help assemble their airplanes.
I want a search program built into my browser such that I can click on keywords in an article then hit a button, and it’ll instantly trackdown other articles with those same keywords in them.
Isn’t there some firefox search plugin to do that? I only have to highlight a word, right click, and I can search for that word using pretty much any search engine I want; also, when I alt+click on a word, a little box pops up displaying whatever entries answers.com could find regarding it, mostly definitions and stuff.
A cyber-being that can digitize the planet without undermining biology, eventually culminating in a techno-rapture, with all machines and humans becoming one with it. It will then be able to traverse the cosmos as a complete being with all our wills and intellects, a being known only as “Earth.” Post singularity trans-trans humanism at it’s finest. Or at least working transhuman augments.
I’ll get the screwdriver…
A method for making sure that everybody is at the right combination of clothes and room temperature settings.
Actually, that could get solved at least partly by getting rid of “dress codes.” If I’m going to be in an unheated, way too large office shared with about 40 other people, with the windows open when it’s 4C outside I want my right to wear my thick booties, corduroy jeans and a sweater so thick it makes me look twice my size! Still, some companies would be more likely to buy a gadget than to buy into the idea that people in non-public-facing jobs should be allowed corduroys…
I heard once of using a fire extinguisher, the CO2 type, with that plastic nozzle thing for this use. Pop a can into the nozzle, give it a blast (try not to propel the can across the room) and presto, chilled beverage in an instant.
Of course it would be a good idea to have a separate extinguisher for cooling purposes and not use the ones you depend on for putting out a fire!