Oh, what a tangled web we weave … with all of our tech gear and corresponding chargers. Get a handle on all those cords and manage your family’s cell phones, MP3 players and digital cameras with a handy charging station. Pottery Barn’s lacquer Smart Photo caddy and recharger has a back cubby for portable electronics and a six-socket power strip concealed behind. Cubbies in the front stow desk accessories and three photo openings create a desktop gallery ($99). Plug and play your iPod while charging other electronics all in one spot. The lacquer Smart all-in-one (pictured) includes built-in speakers and a six-socket power strip ($169). Kids these days often have more gadgets than their parents, which means they could probably fill their own charging station. The kids docking station comes in a rainbow of colors and features cutouts like hearts and stars ($79). Bed Bath and Beyond sells a more basic model. The black 600 Denier charging station provides a home for up to four devices ($15; power strip sold separately). Brookstone’s mini charging valet is the perfect addition to your workspace, whether it’s at the office or at home ($30).

Did you know you can watch plenty of films instantly through your high-speed Internet connection without leaving your sofa? With a set-top box (as in TV set) similar to your cable box, you can choose from thousands of films with the click of a remote. The Roku Netflix Player ($100; pictured) is a one-time purchase for Netflix subscribers. Hook it up to any TV — whether it’s the newest HD model or one you’ve had for years — and you can select movies and TV episodes from your Netflix Instant Queue to watch right away in the comfort of your bedroom or living room or wherever there’s a TV and an internet connection. (You’ll still receive DVDs via post from Netflix, in accordance with your monthly subscription.) Vudu is a competing service for those with fast Internet connections (2.2 Mbps for instant viewing). The box costs $299, with a wireless kit for $50, and even though you do not have to have a subscription, you do have to pay rental or purchase fees for each program. With Apple TV (40 GB for $229, 160GB for $329), you can rent movies from the iTunes store and watch them instantly on your computer, iPod, iPhone, or television, but you must own a widescreen enhanced-definition or high-definition television with an HDMI, DVI, or component video input port. You also must have an iTunes Store account and a broadband Internet connection. Just think: No more driving to the rental store or dealing with heavily scratched movies that freeze up during the film’s high point.

Japan’s Rare Mono Shop sells far-out, amusing and somewhat useful gadgets, most of them involving USB devices. I only know because the company is poised to open a U.S. store in August and the English language catalog is now online. I highly recommend a visit to browse products such as “bone conduction headphones,” which transfer sound through the cheekbone rather than into the ear. If you love the unintentional results of bad Japanese-to-English translations, there’s plenty to enjoy here. (“Outside sound can be heard as it does not close your ears!” reads the copy beside a male model demonstrating the headphones with ears uncovered.) The funniest mistake in translation I found was a $2,980 price tag for a combination USB hub/tape dispenser that looks to be worth $29.80 at best (or else our currency is in much worse shape than I thought). Actually, not many of the items are priced yet and the site warns visitors, “We do not accept return of the product due to misuse or misunderstanding of the product. If you have any concern, please wait until we introduce officially for international market.” That should be in August. I can hardly wait to learn more about the gold ingot USB hub, pictured, which looks like a real gold brick into which one can plug eight USB devices. Also of interest: the compact, portable USB AC charger, which powers USB-driven devices without a computer. Just plug it into an outlet and plug-in up to two devices. The Rare Mono Shop sells all sorts of gadgets to use with it, such as a USB eye warmer and USB aroma diffuser. You get the idea.

It’s no news that everyone from retailers to movie studios and electronics manufacturers wants you to buy a Blu-ray DVD player. They hit early adopters with “be the first on your block” ad campaigns, and now that the format war is over they’re still offering the kind of incentives usually seen when a technology is new: Just recently, Amazon started offering buyers of select Blu-ray players an $80 add-on bundle that would get their movie collection jump-started. (The titles included are a mixed bag, pictured, but $10 per film is quite a price.) Some of the incentives are a bit more thoughtful than usual. Martin Scorsese lovers who already own the standard DVD version of Gangs of New York, for instance, can ease the pain of buying a second version for Blu-ray by mailing in a coupon for a $10 rebate (other titles are eligible as well). A better development — financially and practically — is the new trend of “digital copy” bundling. Some movie studios are bundling second discs with certain Blu-ray titles that contain a digital file users can install on iPods for mobile viewing. Fox’s Juno was a prominent early example, but other companies — like Warner Brothers, with 10,000 B.C. and Lionsgate with the latest Rambo flick — are getting into the game. Hopefully, it will soon become an industry standard to let buyers own portable digital versions of the DVD movies they buy.

We hear a lot about the decline of reading, often blamed on competing entertainment such as computer games. But for those who devour bestselling crime novels and science fiction/fantasy books, reading and computer games go hand in hand. Wildly popular author, James Patterson (“America’s #1 storyteller,” according to press releases), has expanded his brand to include an interactive game called “Death in Scarlet,” based on his Women’s Murder Club series of novels. The game, which is downloadable on PCs and available all over the web for a free trial, will be released for Windows Vista/XP on Aug. 26 for $29 (preorder at Amazon). It offers gamers a brand new Patterson story about a chilling series of murders in San Francisco. The investigation allows players to find hidden objects inside nine investigations full of brain-bending puzzles and “strikingly beautiful artwork” on their way to solving the psychotic killer’s identity. First of a planned series based on Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club novels, “Death in Scarlet” is aimed at female ”casual gamers” who like simple rules and ease of play. Fans of bestselling writer, Orson Scott Card, will soon have their own video game to enjoy. “Ender’s Game: Battle Room” (based on his novel) is coming to most downloadable platforms, though the release date is unannounced. Card will be a chief consultant on adapting the novel into a game.

Friday’s release of the “3G” version of Apple’s iPhone ($200) was a sensation, drawing a wave of eager customers that, despite lessons learned last year, actually dragged the activation procees to a halt for some folks. Still, the speedier, more fully featured phone arrived not a moment too soon, as other cell-phone manufacturers are desperate to ride Apple’s design coattails. This is nothing new, of course: Months before the first generation was released, there was already enough imitation going on for Apple to take legal action. Some trend followers beat the original iPhone onto the market while others appeared to vanish before they got beyond the design phase; still others were clumsy enough to get tech journalists snickering, and have stayed in China to date. Today, the big hit in the non-iPhone iPhone arena appears to be Samsung’s Instinct (which starts at around $500, but with “instant savings” and rebates, the price drops to $130) comfortable , a familiar-looking little candybar that leapfrogs the new iPhone’s GPS capabilities by boasting actual turn-by-turn directions. (The iPhone will simply find your location on a map; the rest is up to you.) Then there’s LG’s Voyager, around $200, which combines touchscreen input with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Nokia’s N800 ($300 online, but they’re out of stock on their website and at Amazon.com) takes a different design road, grafting its wide-format screen onto a case resembling a vintage electric shaver. None of these are cheap, and prices vary widely because of discounts and rebates, but the new HTC Touch Diamond (which the FCC just approved but is not yet on the U.S. market) and Samsung’s i900 (pictured), which also hasn’t hit the market yet, thoroughly compared here, buck trends by having a base cost, expected to be around $600, which is far higher than the iPhone’s slashed price. At least with those two, you wouldn’t be committed to using AT&T, as you are with Apple’s product. And what of that smartphone titan, the Blackberry? While their upcoming “Thunder 9500,” which will be tied to Verizon and is expected to hit store shelves in September, may eventually rock users’ worlds, gossip on the Internet (some of which is chronicled here) suggests it’s far from ready for prime time. However, if you want a sneak peek at it, tech blogger Boy Genius claims to have found the first picture of one and boasts about it on his blog.

Club Penguin, Toontown and Webkinz are online virtual worlds created for children, where kids can safely pretend they are a host of different cartoon or animal-like characters. They can play games, adopt pets and make friends. At Disney’s Club Penguin, a child can create a penguin, name it, dance, wave and send greeting cards or “talk” with other penguins. Before your child starts to play, be sure to read the Parent’s Guide. Club Penguin is for kids 6 to 14. They can play for free, but membership ($5.95 a month, $57.95 a year) lets them dress up their penguin and adopt more than one Puffle (a fuzzy round pet).  Toontown Online (screenshot pictured), also from Disney, is another online multiplayer role-playing game, designed for kids 7 and older. (What is Toontown is helpful for parents.) Children create a character (usually an animal), and explore Toontown. As they run, walk, swim and climb in this brightly colored animated world, they can compete in games and battle evil robot Cogs (which aren’t really scary). Kids can play for free, but a bigger world for members is $80 annually or $10 a month. At Webkinz, by Ganz, you begin by buying a Webkinz toy. The plush pets each come with their own code. By entering the code, players get access to the games and activities at Webkinz. Bbtoystore is one of the sites where you can buy the toys online. For example, a set of four stuffed toys (the Siamese cat, Lemon Lime gecko, Pink Googles the duck and Striped Snake) is $60.  A bullfrog is $12, and a single spotted leopard is $16. At the Webkinz e-store, you can buy accessories for your stuffed animal, like a super bed ($9). Log into Webkinz, enter the code and the pet “comes to life.” Then kids can feed, dress and play with it.