Dark Horse GelaSkins are decorative coverings for phones and laptops featuring some of Dark Horse’s most popular properties, including "The Umbrella Academy," Yoshitaka Amano, Tim Burton, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Hellboy," and many more. The special Dark Horse GelaSkins are scheduled to be released in August of this year and will be available to order from www.gelaskins.com. However, as an added bonus to San Diego Comic-Con attendees, a selective number of advance skins will be available for purchase at the Dark Horse booth # 2615.

The Dark Horse versions aren't available at gelaskins.com yet, but you should check out what they already have. Incredible artwork of all sorts. And you get a downloadable wallpaper with each one, so your screen can matches the exterior.

Gelaskins are very thin wraps for your portable device that offer protection without bulk, and add a touch of style to your day. Available for iPods, iPhones, Mac and PC laptops, phones, and portable gaming devices. And the artists get a cut of every one you buy. If you really like the art, you can buy a Giclee print of it!

Waiting for a SugarShock Gelaskin…

All well and good. But when they updated why did they change the app's icon, which was cool and distinctive (see above left), into something that looks like an "I Can Read!" book? Clipart restrictions? Aiming at the children's iPhone market? Lost a bet? I don't recall offhand if the pro and free versions had different icons before so perhaps this is a way to make the difference more obvious, but jeez.

And yet, even with the amazing time-wasting bonanza available to me through the iTunes store — and that's not even counting the new world open to me if I ever hold my breath and jail-break the thing — there are still whole categories of applications I can't find. So, with a hopeful hint to restless programmers who just need a direction, here are the apps I want.

RealTip

I want to enter the total of my dinner and get the amount of the tip. But, and this is important, only after I check off boxes to describe my waitperson's performance, which would then positively or adversely affect the amount of the gratuity. Did she smile and remember everything, but spill ketchup on my wife's head? Was the food present, warmer than room temperature, and more or less on the plate? Were we treated to unwanted dinner theater involving our waiter and his ex-girlfriend-who-still-lives-with-him? Were we left waiting less than the time it would have taken to hunt, kill, and prepare the food ourselves? RealTip should take it all into account and give me a total I can live with.

GeoPerv

Not sure about your new neighbor? Shivering whenever you walk by your new babysitter? Wondering why your date seems so creepy? Snap a surreptitious pic of him and GeoPerv will instantly compare it to the local sexual offenders database (determined by geolocation) and "To Catch a Predator" reruns.

Burning Ear

Automatically IMs you (through Twitter or txt message) whenever anyone in your contact list is talking or typing about you through their iPhone. You can add optional alarm levels triggered by specific user-chosen keywords such as "hot," "skanky," "best friend I ever had," or "I'm willing to turn state's evidence."

RefreshCards

A random photo slideshow that can pop up photos of your family and friends, along with names and pertinent information, whenever you've been using your iTouch long enough to have forgotten all about them. Example: "Teresa. Your wife. Mother of your children. You love her. She's probably sitting right next to you."

Dudeware

This handy app can be set to selectively hide, with a stroke, any media on your iPhone that you don't want your friends to know you like such as musical soundtracks, flower wallpapers or your rented download of "27 Dresses."

HolyGround

When you're being chased by angry vampires, you don't have time to dash about, hoping to stumble onto a temple or a church graveyard. This Google Maps mashup will quickly determine where you are and display every chunk of consecrated ground within running distance, with optional icons for caches of holy water and communal wafers.

Gang Signs

How do I signify my approval of an exceptionally vicious banger? What gesture will get me beaten up, and which one will cause the gang leader to loan me his girlfriend? What do I do to get through downtown LA at 3 in the morning? Gang Signs helps you learn the motions, hand gestures, and arm contortions for every major gang in the U.S. (with regional variations) and even uses motion detection to tell you if you're doing it wrong before the Bloods get their hands on you. Coming soon: add-ons for international gangs, mafioso, rappers and ASL.

BillWaiter

Once you create your profile by selecting your creditors from the provided list — power, phone, cable, credit cards, mortgage, etc — BillWaiter will create a personalized bill payment schedule for you that takes into account which bills can safely be stalled and for exactly how long, to the day, compiled from other users who are so far still out of jail. Includes lists of which companies can be fooled with the "sending an empty envelope" trick and which ones cannot.

Spoiler Alert

This handy app analyzes and blocks any and all Web sites, blog entries and Twitter feeds that might inadvertantly tell you more of your selected TV shows, books and movies than you really want to hear. "Spoiler Alert" is free; "Spoiler Alert Pro" can detect conversations around you and emit a piercing, 120db horn blast to allow you safe and oblivious escape.

APPrehend

Immediately cuts off your access to iTunes whenever you fiddle with your apps too much. Add one more app over the preset level and your menu will be replaced with a flashing "knock it off, already" message and a picture of an exhausted iPhone.

What do you want to see on the iPhone? What do you wish you had never seen?

Ah, but I was made of sterner stuff. No glitzy fadmachine for me! I was
perfectly content with my Palm TX, even if it didn't have fancy
bouncing animations or sophisticated motion detection or a koi pond
app. Mostly I used it to read ebooks, and since there wasn't a– What?
There are now three different ebook readers available for the iTouch?
Including the same one I use the most, eReader? And eReader.com and
Fictionwise and Baen Books all make it easy to download your books to
your iTouch? But, but, but…

It began to haunt my dreams. So
cool, so tempting. Slim, silver, comfortable to the hand. Maybe I could
just try one, see if I like it? But the prohibitive (for me) price kept
me a safe distance away. I'd stop by the locked white counter in Target
or idly click around Amazon just in case the iTouch price inexplicably
dropped to $50, but no luck. (Always the iTouch, by the way. My cell
plan is firmly locked in Verizon's vaults, guarded by that oddly bland
guy with glasses and his crowds and helicopters, so the iPhone is dead
to me.) And then I saved some money, and got some more for Christmas,
and "I really really want one" was sounding more and more justifiable,
and the gleaming white die was cast.

I chose the Apple store for
my conversion. The thing never goes on sale so it hardly mattered where
or when I bought it. (Yes, I could have ordered from store.apple.com
and saved the tax, but that would have taken days! Whole days!)
Besides, it just seemed right, and I knew I would be welcomed among
friends, possibly even given handfuls of flowers to go sell somewhere.
On January 1st, 2009, I cleansed myself and my wife Teres and I went to
the Casselberry Mall to begin my new life.

The next half hour
was a blur. Did eager hands really clutch at my sleeves, drawing me in,
or did I dream it? Were there chants, and hymns, and joyous hallelujahs
sung to me by a choir of smiling young people in polo shirts? Was I
really submerged wholly into a glittering pool of apple juice, to be
brought forward as a new and clearly better being?

All I know
is Teres came back from Hot Topic to find me standing outside the
store, dazed, clutching my new white and silver bag and mumbling
something about needing to sync, needing to sync now.

Like
many other people who have spent a wild weekend with a new
acquaintance, I'm in love. I find myself reaching for my iTouch to
reassure myself that it's close. I've loaded all the top free apps on
it, and then deleted most of them, and then loaded on more. I've filled
and emptied it twice with TV shows and movies because I can. I've paid
for more music and software in the last five days than I have in the
last year because it's so easy. At one point I found myself Twittering on it while I was sitting in front of my computer, which has an actual keyboard.

I
can't explain why, really. I can't write on it the way I could on my
Palm TX, which has several efficient word processor programs and, wow,
even lets you cut and paste text, a very sad omission on the part of
the Apple people. I can't move files to it as easily as I can to my
Palm. I have to convert non-iTunes movie files to work with it, whereas
I have apps for my Palm that can read most any format I can throw in
there. There isn't an Apple equivalent of my folding Palm keyboard.

But it has personality, in a way my Palm does not. It feels
better. High-tech, Star-Trekky, futuristic, like a time-traveler left
it behind so I could play Ninja Ropes. I feel privileged to own it.

So I'll sell the Palm, and hope Apple adds a word processor soon, and I'll try not to fondle it too obviously in your presence.

If you don't have one, you just won't get it.