ADD-Prosthetic

For ADD grad students and undergraduates and business professionals: a little solid-state voice recorder, small enough to fit on a keychain, with a high-gain mic and a red 'last 5 minutes' button. When you hit the button, it saves the preceding five minutes of audio, which it has been recording, to flash as an MP3. Later, you can put the pieces together via USB and find out what you missed.

Problems:

To work ideally it would be in an always-on state, constantly pulling ambient audio and holding it in a FIFO buffer. Since I'm imagining something that has the form factor of an iPod Shuffle or smaller, I imagine you'd need to charge it daily by plugging it into the USB port of your computer. An on/off switch would solve the power issue, but it would mean that you'd have to turn the device on before entering the meeting/what-have-you. It would be better if you could just discreetly reach into your pocket and click the button, whenever you notice that you've zoned out.

Advantages:

* Cheap to manufacture (flash mem. can be very limited) * Not as cumbersome or blatant as a traditional voice recorder (even one of the new flash-based ones) * Easy to use. I really imagine just a single button. And a really good mic, that can pick stuff up even from your pocket.