Ideas are meant to be stolen. I fully believe that. Once you bring a concept, like the graphical user interface for instance, into into this world, it’s no longer yours. Now when it comes to today’s smartphone platforms, they’re all just lumps of ideas that have been hand picked over the many decades of computing.

Focusing on the camera aspect for a moment, Microsoft, with Windows Phone, was one of the first to integrate a shortcut on the lock screen for bringing up the camera. While that’s great for when you take your phone out of your pocket, what happens if you already have your device in your hand? Do you fiddle with the home button, find the right page, and click the camera icon?

The guys behind CyanogenMod have come up with something that screams common sense. All Android phones have notification shades, so why not stick a shortcut to the camera up there? Better yet, why not integrate the camera’s viewfinder directly into said shade?

Unfortunately, you have to do a lot of nasty things to your phone to get this to work, and it’s probably not going to be stable for at least a few versions, which brings me to my earlier point. Google should steal this, full stop, and make all of our lives easier.