I know I have. Many more times than I care to admit.
>it is that too many companies are not doing things worthy of hackers.
Excellent. And since I always ask this question of people who lament the status quo:
What did you have in mind?
Make personal analytics useful (something like http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/09/stephen-wolfram-reveals-t..., but in a way that is actually useful to normal people).
Link the offline and online into one seamless reality (google glass)
If I had to dream about the future and what it should be we're aiming for, it'd be joint universal augmented network access. I want to live in a world like this one --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denno_Coil
Conceptually, I think this is similar to the last-mile broadband problem[1] - it's not economical to lay fiber to the customer's home unless the customer lives in an urban/reasonably densely populated area. Similarly, if you want to go from transport hub to transport hub (bus/rail station, airport etc.) that's no problem, but getting from the transport hub to your home ranges from expensive and awkward to impossible, depending on how far you live from the transport hub.
Self-driving cars solve this problem. Who cares if you have a 100 mile commute, if you can snooze all the way? Just order the car for a set time every morning to allow enough time for the drive and go back to sleep on the way.
Compare Europe and New York's Tri-State-Area to Boston or BART.
So while I don't necessarily expect people to have something in mind, I always hope they do.
Small data. My data. A 1999 google like interface into an index of me: my email, my documents, images and video that I've collected. Nice to haves would be a copy of the various conversations I have had on third party social media sites.
This index should be set up in a way that I can easily include a copy of it in my Trust that will pass my assets to my daughter (note - I am increasingly thinking that the raw data, much of what either lives in the cloud or gets backed up to CrashPlan, is an asset that should be part of the an Estate that gets passed to the next generation). She should be able to add to it when she is a old enough and (if I am so lucky) my grandchildren's grandchildren should be able to search for vague terms in the stories that their great grandmother (my daughter) told them when they were young. They will get links to relevant emails or documents that help them explore the past. They will be able to see the connections between images takes a the same time or location in a way that lets them explore their history. As I understand this tool better I will be able to narrate a one way version of my story to those of future generations.
As I said above, a tool like this would solve my problem. Do you think it would be useful to a computer literate, smart but non hacker/programmer type? Any ideas on how you think one should approach this problem?