Once again my phone home screens runneth over. As I researched and programmed the May 12 OMMA Mobile, which is focusing on apps and the developing platform wars among Google, Apple and the mobile Web, I have been burning up the 3G and Wi-Fi channel with downloads. It is time to do a brain dump of observations that occur to me as I spend more time with mobile apps than a grown man probably should.

The app economy is booming to the tune of 7 billion downloads in 2009, according to Chetan Sharma Consulting. But we still need to put the app in context of the larger marketing and media distribution plan. One agency executive distinguished between brands demanding their iPhone app and executing a sensible mobile Web presence. It is "vanity vs. sanity," he told me. Apps are often built to placate brand executives, but the mobile Web is where many of them will really get the most users.

Some interesting data from comScore yesterday demonstrates both how critical smartphones are to the future of mobile marketing and how much more penetration is needed for critical mass. Despite the apparent resurgence of mobile gaming in the past year, fueled principally by touch screens, the number of people playing games on their phones actually declined between February 2009 and February 2010 by 13%. This seeming dip in the market was driven entirely by a 35% drop in gaming among feature phone users, even while the number of smartphone owners who game escalated 60%.

While all of the tech dweebs in Silicon Valley are bickering over which local/mobile/social app will win out in the battle for merchants, millions and millions of us would rather put our eyes out than waste a second of our day "checking in" on these damned apps. But while this new generation of apps tries to create in us a whole new set of habits, there is a class of less-heralded apps that are riding on an existing habit. And they don't have to invent a new business model. It is the great American ritual of ordering take-out.

Nearly a week into playing with and demoing the iPad to others, my biggest surprise is how the larger Web experience tends to push the app experience more to the side. I find myself feeling a bit constrained by the current selection and attractiveness of the apps themselves.

With my daughter shipped off to Florida for a spring break vacation with her mother, it was safe to bring the iPad home Saturday morning for a weekend of uninterrupted play. Despite her previous dismissal of the new device, even she admits she will be all over the thing when she gets a chance. As it was, she was texting me from the beach asking how the test-run was going.

Was I the only one a bit puzzled by the release this week of Apple's "Guided Tour" videos for the iPad? The topics covered, from iBooks to email, photos to YouTube, have a glaring omission: the App Store. Huh?

I am not sure exactly how this happened, but after a pleasant interregnum, we seem to be back in the throes of gadget lust. The iPad, of course, is the poster child for unreasonable tech cravings, but recent gushery over 3D TVs, eBook readers and smart phones real and promised underscores the return of the toy. Perhaps I just wasn't paying close enough attention during the recession, or maybe gadget porn was humbled by the downturn, but it smells like Tech Spirit again.

"I will be 18. Legally an adult." My daughter, who now drives up in her Honda Civic and pores over her buzzing BlackBerry with the intensity of any middle manager, is coming of age in the next few weeks. She and her friends are trying to celebrate their group emancipation with a major road trip this summer across country. Dad, terrified, of course, is trying to figure out what the wireless plan is -- so I know how and where to airlift little Miss Legally Independent out of trouble. How about an iPad 3G? It will have mapping so she …

Can an online display ad make you cry? Well, sure -- when the creative is as crushingly poor as most of the advertising we have been seeing since the dubious invention of the "banner" in the mid-1990s. It makes me tear up a bit, if only in despair over the lost opportunity.