With holidays over and the economy wheezing ahead, what better time than grey midwinter for a little tech blue-skying? Below is a grab bag of ideas, not necessarily earth shaking, but quietly useful. If you’d like to develop any, e-mail me so we can discuss my cut of the profits. (I’d hate sue a reader as nice as you.) If perchance these modest breakthroughs already exist, let us know with a quick post here. We could all use a little midwinter hope and cheer.

1) Pop-Up Blockers for TV. Permanent station logos at the corner of every screen are bad enough.  But pop-up promos, dancing dolts, mugging anchors? Enough! We did it for computers. Time for a clever soul to hack TV and block or zap these obnoxious screen pests. While we’re at it, how about automatic volume leveling for the jacked-up blare of commercials? Instead of desperate tricks, enlightened providers and advertisers should be looking at a more open approach for platforms and programs that provide deeper, more interactive experiences with sponsors.               

2) Fat, Open Outlook. For all the industry hoo-ha about browser wars and cloud apps, there are plenty of people like me, mostly in business, happy to do most everything from Outlook. It’s a familiar home base and an under-exploited desktop control panel. Hey Microsoft, you really want street cred as an open source player? Then open up Outlook to outside app developers. Make it easy to add deduping, Bing desktop search, attractive skins, a video feed corner, access to One Note and EverNote. And oh, it'd be great to have an easy way to integrate various docs into Outlook folders and vice versa. While you’re at it, how about plug-ins supporting non-MS apps like Skype, Linked In, Facebook. etc.?  You can steroidize this ubiquitous legacy app and still make plenty of money with SharePoint. Yes I know Outlook is already groaning and over-engineered. And that the company is pitching its own collaborative and social vision with Office 2010. But a pinch of that billions in R&D money and a new perspective would do wonders. Pimp my Outlook!        

3) Better magazine subscription management. At least twice in the past year I’ve tried to subscribe to a popular health/fitness magazine. And … nothing. Apparently, the odds of success using a paper subscription card to add or cancel a subscription or to change an address are about equal to winning the daily number at your local snackie-mart, which is to say, microscopic. (Guess they don’t call them “blow cards” for nothing.) If publishers and fulfillment houses are going to ignore them, then stop stuffing a handful into every issue! Admit this is a prank or a charming vestige from an earlier innocent age. Then direct us to www.magsdirect.com, www.magazinesubscriptions.com or a site that actually works. And don’t even get me started about the 4, 6, 8, 12 weeks it takes for a magazine to start arriving if, by some miracle, your subscription request does manage to get processed. What could possibly take so long? Are they cutting down fresh trees just for me? Is there a shortage of people to lick address labels? And publishers wonder why magazines are shriveling; (hint - it’s not just too many “Twilight” stories).

4) RFID for lost personal stuff. As someone who has traveled a lot for years, I’ve left behind cell phones, umbrellas, raincoats, gloves, sunglasses, music players, books and even running shoes -- in taxis, hotel lobbies, on airplanes, in bathrooms – enough to stock a nice little eBay store. A couple of months ago my new $400 ultra cool compact digital camera vanished somewhere between Boston and Chicago. Drat! I need a cheap consumer technology that protects me from my hurried self. How about equipping all losable items with an RFID chip or other cheap device that beeps when the item gets, say, more than 10 feet from the owner? And the ability to track lost items from a PC? We’re making big progress for auto-detection and disablement of lost phones. Why not keep going? This is a great opportunity for manufacturers or third-party service providers. Consumers like me would gladly pay an extra few bucks to avoid losing expensive items.    

5) Smart Footballs. How many times have you seen this: Pig pile at the goal line. Did the ball make it across? Who knows? By the time you unstack all the players you never really know if there’s been hidden funny business and whether a touchdown has really been scored. Simple solution: Embed a small chip into the football that sets off a flashing light or bolt of lightning between the uprights when the ball enters the end zone. This could be done in a way that doesn’t affect the aerodynamics of the ball and would help reduce bad calls, goal line challenges, “further reviews” and other game-killing stops in the action. It’s too late for Super Bowl XLIV, but not the 2010-2011 season…. 

What smarter technologies would you like to see in 2010? Share your ideas below.