Furniture for kicking back with your music and games

Home Entertainment
The Pyramat PM440-W Deluxe Sound Rocker may not be as pretty as my dream chair, the Jett recliner from La-Z Boy's Todd Oldham line. But no old man recliner can wrap you in sound and sensation the way this chair (about $200) will. The PM440-W, unveiled last month, is a fabric-covered rocker with built-in stereo speakers and a subwoofer in the backrest, which vibrates your body with every videogame explosion. It has wireless audio reception up to 25 feet. The chair, according to Pyramat, has an adjustable headrest and a larger frame and better cushioning than earlier versions. That should make it ideal for longer videogame sessions, as if there was ever such a thing as a short session.

Greetings

Smilebox.com applies scrapbooking designs to video

There isn't a crafty bone in my body, but I can see why some people are drawn to all of the materials you can get yourself into with scrapbooking. If you don't like making a mess, however, Smilebox.com is a nice website and photo-sharing service for creating fancy digital photo albums.

Last week, it added support for video clips.

With Smilebox, you can drag and drop your media into some nicely designed templates, and then add your own text and music. Nothing new there. But any reader of the magazine Scrapbook Answers will appreciate the thought that's gone into the design elements you can access.

Smilebox (PC only, sorry Mac folks) is obviously aimed at women with kids. I don't see many guys using the site to create invites to poker night in the man cave.

The more you pay for Smilebox (up to $5 per month for "Club Smilebox" membership), the more designs you can access for your greetings, invitations, photo albums, and videos. By paying, you can also avoid having your "multimedia expressions," as the company calls them, play with ads.

Kids' stuff

A digicam for 4-year-olds, and video for tweens

I know a guy who allowed his kid to play only with wooden toys, fearing that electronic gadgets might prevent the boy from achieving true genius. The teachers at our local public school also preach against letting kids play with anything with a battery in it. Perhaps digital toys do have the potential to make kids passive and kill creativity (if they don't damage their hearing first). But it may be also wise to expose your kid to the media and tools they will work with later in life.

Some kids are as likely to pick up a digital camera as they are a glue stick and construction paper. As the father of a 4-year-old shutterbug, I see as much creativity in her when she frames a shot as when she dumps sparkles onto sticky paper.

VTech, the Hong Kong electronics company, proudly refers to the use of its learning toys as "edutainment," blending two words many adults believe should be far apart. I'll admit its V.Smile Baby Infant Development System, a plush computer keyboard for babies who can hardly sit up, is going overboard. But two VTech products, the Kidizoom Camera and the VTech Gadget, seem like a good fit for kids who are curious about how grown-up devices work.

Kidizoom can capture 120 photos or up to five minutes' worth of video with built-in memory and has a memory card expansion slot. (The photos are just 640x480 pixels.) You can add some effects to the images, and connect the camera to a TV or PC for viewing. Kidizoom also includes games and puzzles, plus a 1.8-inch color viewing screen. And when it gets smashed to bits, you'll only be out $60 (VTech's estimated retail price for the camera).

VTech designed its other toy, Gadget, for older kids. It has more memory for digital photos and video than Kidizoom, and a slot for Gadget game cartridges. Kids can also use their Gadgets (about $100) to listen to MP3s and have text and voice chats.