Fred has an interesting post about the three legs of the consumer technology stool: the PC, the Internet, and consumer electronics (I would put software/services in there, but that would kill the stool analogy–perhaps Fred thinks since software is a part of all three you can just eliminate that).

Anyway, he makes the very valid points that:

1. consumer devices are still largely closed, and as a result have limited innovation (so true, just look at your Blackberry and iPod and shake your head/roll your eyes)

2. VCs really suck at investing in consumer electronics

This got me to thinking: if I was going to do another startup and it *had* to be in the consumer electronics space–a gadget that is–what would I build?!

I can tell you right now that the thing I long for most is a way to take pictures with my Canon 20D and easily put them on my Flickr account. So, I think that’s what I’d build: a wifi/EVDO Flickr enabled camera.

Now, I know that you can buy an attachment for the 20D for a grand (the device on the bottom of the camera on the right), but it simply dumps the images to an FTP. What I want is something much simpler and much more integrated. I want to be able to have the camera resize the image (just like the Flickr tool) so that I can quickly get these images up to my peeps when I’m shooting. I want to tag them on the camera. Also, I’d like this device to be really cheap. Heck, why the heck doesn’t Flickr make a gosh darn camera like this–gosh! How well would a Flickr-based camera do?!?!!? They would sell 100,000 the first year I’m sure.

Since we’re at it, why not have the device be able to send audio notes/podcasts. Again, I know there are ways to do this with existing devices, but I’d really like to see a product designed for the task.

What would you build? (oh no, my comments are still broken… post your answer on your blog).