Al Ruechel, Your Technology

Pyzam, like Google and Yahoo, is a name that stands for nothing. It's just catchy.

In a nutshell, the site offers hundreds of free, on-screen graphics, Flash toys, funny pictures, videos, stickers, cursors and more.

The Most Popular list in the main menu, for example, contains a background uploader that lets you upload any picture from your computer as a background. You can also choose dozens of fully animated nature backgrounds.

The site contains a glitter text maker. Can you imagine what it would look like if we used something like that on all our news stories?

Not so much.

There are dozens and dozens of mini-games that can be uploaded to appear on your own Web page.

There is even a way to put your picture on the cover of a magazine without paying for it at one of those mall kiosks, and another that lets you take graphic messages and pop them on your Web page, e-mail or desktop.

You get the idea: Basically toys for your computer.

The one that originally got my attention is on my son and his wife's Web page. It is a customized countdown clock. Theirs is for the birth of my second grandchild.

OK, I'm bragging.

If there are any drawbacks to the site, I have not found any yet. You do need to register a name and password for some of the free items, but the site promises your name will not be sold to anyone else.

Some of these programs take up a chunk of memory, and can potentially crash your computer if you do not do a good job of regularly running anti-virus programs.

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