A friend sends me a picture of himself holding his new iPhone.  "I just got it a few days ago.  I can’t keep my hands off it."

Another makes this comment:  "The fact that I can’t get an iPhone hurts my soul."

Me?  I held out as long as I could.  Finally I justified it by telling myself it will be like carrying around a phone, an iPod, a PDA, a camera and an alarm clock in one neat little package.  And it is — it’s handier than a Star Trek Tricorder.  It does everything but shoot laser beams and open my beer.

Here’s the thing:  it does MORE than I thought it could.  Way more.  It’s even handier than I’d thought in my wildest dreams.

Also, I’ve bought more software in the past month than I have in my entire life.  More music, too.  And I’ll tell you why — it’s insidious — the software is priced low enough for impulse buying, and it’s always at your fingertips.  You don’t have to sit at the computer studying what would be the best for the money, and you don’t have to drive to the nearest software store.

During idle minutes at the doctor’s office, for instance, I realized I had a really good signal, and sat there browsing the App store for new things … and there’s always new things.  I spent twenty dollars without even thinking about it.

I write blogs on it (not this one, it’s too long and I’d go nuts trying to type all this on the little thumb keyboard).  I keep up with friends on MySpace and Facebook.  Every twenty minutes I compulsively check my email.

It’s my alarm clock in the morning.  Its my meeting reminders.  It’s my source for weather and news.  It’s my full blown English dictionary, and a Wikipedia portal.  It’s my life’s soundtrack stereo.

I balance my checking account on it.  Keep my todo lists.  My shopping list.

I use it as a map.  I’M NEVER LOST.

Keep up with my Netflix queue.

Convert units of measurement.  Network through LinkedIn.

I even have a program that tells me how far away the last lightning strike was.

The one thing I hardly ever do with it, it turns out, is make a phone call.

Other people who have them, they whisper to me in conspiratorial tones.  What games do I have?  Movies?  And always the question, "What is the coolest new app?"

Before I got mine, I used to be annoyed when I’d get an email where at the bottom it said, "Sent from my iPhone."  For the first few days, I took it off mine, so it didn’t say that.  Then … I have to admit this … I put it back on.

I couldn’t help myself.  It’s like saying, "Ha ha!  Look!  I have the coolest toy, and I want to brag, brag, brag!"  Now when I get email from others that feature that bragging line down at the bottom I feel kindred to them.  We’re brothers and sisters.

We belong to the same cult.

The cult of the iPhone.

And don’t say that it isn’t.  Look at it in the press.  Watch them yakking on and on about it on blogs like Lifehacker.  Or even, er … here.  Yes.

It’s a cult alright.

And I haven’t been in love with a piece of hardware like this since my very first computer, way back in the early 80’s.

The iPhone is beyond a groovy gizmo.  It’s life changing.  If they ever come out with a keyboard for it, it would replace my laptop.

I mean, after all, a laptop is no where near this cool.

Obviously I am writing this using the software. One thing it will lead to is much shorter posts.

WordPress for the iPhone is hereby officially proclaimed Groovy.

My initial reaction was, “WTF?  Why another freaking browser?”  But then I read the story behind it, about why the decided to create a new browser from the ground up, and … wow.  It made complete sense.

Who knows if it will catch on or not, but it has the potential to change everything.

Here’s the main advantage and why I’m at least partially sold on it:  They designed it from scratch for how we use the Internet now, as opposed to the other browsers which all struggle to accommodate what they were never designed to do in the first place.

Think of it.  We now use the browser as the universal application.  We use it for everything.  It was never designed to do that — it was supposed to display passive HTML.  Everything else the browsers do now is because of add-ons to the original design and concept.

The Google browser is designed from the ground up to be the universal application, almost — if you will — an operating system for the “Cloud.”  They designed it with the features of an operating system.  It’s built to run programs.

This is what I expect to happen:  Mozilla will adopt it as the new core for Firefox and this will be the basis for Firefox 4.  Microsoft will also adopt it and make it Internet Explorer 9.

If they don’t, they’re doomed, and they’d be stupid not to because the code is all open source.

This robotic mower concept called “Muwi” is featured over at Yanko Design.  It not only mows the lawn automatically, but instead of just leaving a trail of mulched grass, it forms the cuttings into compacted disks and balls that make it easier to pick up, or, perhaps, play with.

I have to ask you, though.  Who in the hell wants to play with balls of grass?

Still, I think it’s a fun and cool concept and hereby proclaim it to be a Groovy Gizmo.

None the less, it’s a strap on flying machine for one person, and it works.

The inventor, Glenn Martin, trusts the safety of the device so much that he lets his wife fly it.

Wait, that sounds wrong.  I mean that in the sense that he trusts it not to kill his wife.

They even let a New York Times reporter give it a try, but of course the guy promptly flew it into a tree.

Video here.  NYT Article here.

Yes, some of them are kinda cool, but none of them especially fires my rockets, and if those are the most wonderful gadgets of 2008 then this has been a boring year for gizmos.

This is designer Alice Wang’s evil alarm clock that works through peer pressure, intimidation and humiliation.

It apparently connects to your cell phone via bluetooth, and if you don’t wake up at the appointed time, it begins dialing people at random on your cell phone every three minutes so that your friends, family, acquaintances, business contacts, ex-lovers, and probably even your annoyed in-laws will tell you to wake up so that your alarm clock will stop pestering them.

This is pure evil genius.  Two thumbs way up for Alice Wang.  But I would never, never get one for myself.  Ever.

I would have given an arm and a leg for one of these when I was a science nerd in high school.

It’s a Barbie sized Jesus doll that quotes scripture, tells bible stories, and gives sermons.

It’s also long-winded, because after I pushed the button on His back, Jesus went on and on, and kept going long after I put Him back on the shelf and wandered away.

This toy is surreal in a way that the late Philip K. Dick would have either absolutely loved, or been terrified by.

Combine this with the AI of the various robotic toys that are coming out now, and by Christmas 2010 we’ll have little Jesus dolls that follow you around the house, quoting scripture and asking you to accept Him into your heart, until you’ve been completely saved.

God be praised.  And keep plenty of batteries on hand.