There are so many opportunities for new consumer products, the prospects are simply staggering. One that came to mind recently – when I wasn’t fantasizing about what the “Career Fantasy Suite” would contain (The Fortune Guide to Sex Toys? Wall Street Journal wallpaper? Linens made by white collar criminals?) – was an option for the iPod. There are already about 3,000 iAccessories, but this would either have to be built-in to the Pod itself, or would require opening up the case, which would void the (ridiculously flimsy) warranty, so I’m going to have to pitch this directly to Steve Jobs.

This all stems from the fact that the docking/speaker thing for my ancient iPod is in my craft room and sits across the room behind me where I can’t see it (I sort of aim the remote over my shoulder when a song comes on that I want to skip). I always keep it on shuffle because, well, just because. Since I have about 1,500 songs on the thing and don’t know how 1,450 of them got there, I am frequently at a loss as to who is singing what.

For that reason, I would like to see a new feature called the iDJ (alternatively, Pop-Up Audio, although VH1 – do they still exist? – might want a piece of that) that tells me who I am listening to, what they are singing/playing, what CD/album the song is from, etc. There would be a variety of user-controllable options, such as whether to have the audio caption play before and/or after the song, whether to include other information about the artist/group/songwriter. The commentary could be set to verbose, chatty, terse, or “BBC News Service”. Voices would include George Clooney, Sean Connery, Kathleen Turner, among others. Rita Cosby will not be one of the choices.