THAT dull computer screen getting you down? Enter the brave new world of personalised personal computers. Try a Screenie - an illustrated frame that attaches (with Velcro) to any 13-to 15-inch computer monitor. The frames, US$9.99, come in 51 different designs. The patterned flower frame would be suitable dress for a computer at a garden store. Use the one picturing cute party animals when playing computer games at a child's birthday party. Some Screenies incorporate the screen. In one, coyotes in a night time desertscape look up at the tube. In another, cars are parked facing the computer screen as if it was a drive-in movie. Cherubs circle a gilt Renaissance-style Screenie. Cartoonish fat cats lull about on a postmodern one. A corkboard version is designed for Post-Its. Rusty Schwartz, the Screenies' inventor, is an art gallery owner who worked as a consultant to a software company that did programs for museums. ''Being thrown into the computer world, the contrast with being in an art gallery struck me,'' Schwartz said. He decided he had to do something about the nation's sea of 163 million grey monitors. Working with friend Ken Winston, creative director of Screenies, he came up with the idea of interchangeable frames. The Sonoma, California, company has sold more than 80,000 Screenies since the product's June launch.
