Your Technology

By Anita Hamilton

GROSS GIFTS Tired of reading about the latest company to sell its mundane wares online? The folks at giftcrap.com feel your ennui: their site has links to bizarre gift ideas instead. How about Cheddar-cheese-flavored worms, below, or a cremation urn shaped like a golf bag? For the jerk in your life (their words, not ours), you can get an alarm clock that wakes him or her with 60 seconds of verbal abuse. This site is not recommended for the humor impaired.

DIAL IN STYLE Every year or two the designers at Denmark's Bang & Olufsen set new standards of cool for home electronics. This fall they hope to lure buyers with their new BeoCom 6000 cordless phone. The wedge-shaped handset (in blue, red, green or black) sits on a pyramid-shaped base and has a dialing wheel that makes it easy to scan and store numbers. Is it worth the $475 price? Good question.

GIRL BANDS GO DIGITAL Alanis Morissette and Courtney Love may be yesterday's news, but that hasn't stopped gamemakers from developing the first titles to cash in on female rock sensations. Um Jammer Lammy for the Sony PlayStation ($35) lets players tap their game pad in time with the beat of progressively more complex sounds. (It's harder than you think.) For more of a story line, Lego Friends ($30, available mid-September) lets girls six and up form their own virtual band, compose songs and try to win a competition. Rock on!

--By Anita Hamilton