Keywords: Atlanta, Georgia, Gwinnett, news, entertainment, arts, movies, music, reports, articles, news, media, newspaper, magazine, news, entertainment,

by Barbara Morris

Furby. Kids will love it. Parents will hate it. In fact, some parents may quickly want to follow the example of one enterprising spirit and do a little "surgery". Furbys are interactive toys that "talk" to each other in fur-speak and have a disconcerting resemblance to the title characters in Gremlins. Interesting marketing note: Furbys need each other to learn to speak -- translate into "you should buy two." This is the hot toy of the year.

The grown-up version of Furbys are Weebots, available from the folks at Sharper Image. Note: the ad copy for this is so sickeningly sweet it's a hazard for diabetics. "Adopting" one of these little gems sets you back about $39.

Lost your lava lamp? You can replace it with Dreamlight, a sound-activated light show. It's got little bubbles inside a paper-weight looking object with colored LEDs in the base. Also from Sharper Image, it will set you back about $80.

Want to spend bigger bucks? Why not get a thinner television? FlatTV offers a 42-inch model that's only four-and-a-half inches thick. It uses a liquid crystal display, features nine speakers, VGA connector for display of computer data and images, and more. It'll make your wallet flatter, too, at a price of a cool $15,000 (to put it in perspective, a new VW Beetle has a base price of $15,200.)

How about a Diamond Rio MP3? It's a small digital player for mixing and storing up to an hour of digital-quality music or up to 12 hours of voice quality audio (off the Internet or a CD) using MP3 compression. It has no moving parts and claims it won't skip, no matter what. It runs about $200.

Rather have video? Then get a camcorder from Hammacher Schlemmer. It weighs 12 ounces and gives "30 minutes of Hi-8mm XR quality video on its internal, reusable tape cartridge or up to 350 still images with five seconds of audio each." Just $800.

How about a do-it-all car pager? You call your car, then tell it to do one of the following: start, unlock door, stolen vehicle immobilize, pop trunk, and car finder. It's only $180 with a $3 monthly fee.

And for the person who has everything, try HS's Credit Card-Alarm Wallet. It emits an audible alert whenever a credit card is removed and not returned within 20 seconds. That annoying noise will continue at 20 second intervals for five minutes unless the card is replaced (or until the user throws it to the ground and stomps it into oblivion).

Perhaps you want to give the moon and the stars ... or at least the sun. HS offers an artificial sun that uses 2,600 watts to illuminate a 15,000- to 20,000-square-foot area. It's a tethered helium balloon with four 650-watt halogen bulbs inside. Great for outdoor parties until the neighbor shoots it down. It's a piddling five grand.

OK, let's get educational. How about an interactive globe from Brookstone's. Choose a category (country, people, sounds, time, etc.), touch the stylus to the globe, and it tells you what you want to know. $300.

Still high-tech, but much cheaper and easier to carry, is the Totes Professional. Totes claim this umbrella is less than seven-eighths of an inch thick and 6 1/2 oz. It's only $20.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"... oops, wrong speech! But do send me tips, software, sites, et al. Don't you want to contribute to the Loaf? E-mail barbara.morris@creativeloafing.com.

Extra note: start submitting your favorite URLs for the special year-end issue of Ctrl-Alt-Del.

Bytes & pieces

Doing the right thing

Bringing it home