The UK version of this "lapware" - designed for children sitting in their parent's lap - has now been released and the BBC Internet Correspondent Chris Nuttall coaxed his nine-month-old son Kesara into trying it out. Here's how he fared:

Kesara immediately proved Jump Ahead Baby was to a nine-month-old's tastes - he began eating the box. He managed only a nibble though before setting about gnawing the main course - the hard plastic of the CD case.

You might think it ridiculous trying to introduce babies to computers, when they can't even mouth "Mama" let alone read or type. But place a baby in a room with a computer and you can guarantee it will go straight to the keyboard and monitor - something to bang on, a picture to touch and look at.

These seem to be the basic motivations for designing the software - making the pictures bold, bright and simple and the program as easy to work as just hammering on the keyboard.

Virtual Teddy acts as baby guide

The program starts with a main screen of a Teddy bear and his cot, with clicking on a mobile taking you to one of a selection of activities. These include join-the-dots puzzles, jigsaws, a colouring book, a game of hide-and-seek with Teddy, a dressing-up game, and the matching of animals and sounds down on the farm.

At nine months, the box is as interesting as the program

Although these can all be completed by simple mouse clicks, just bashing the keyboard has the same effect. Kesara was able to thrash the keys repeatedly without the program hanging, which seemed a small miracle.

The manual explained this was a feature: the program ignored anything after the first press until it had completed a seqence of commands.

The manual is written by the Parents Information Network, a London-based consumer watchdog. It suggests "off-computer activities" to accompany the program such as playing Ring a Ring of Roses or Peekaboo.

But there seemed no need - with the computer still functioning, baby and son interacting and things almost under control. It was then that he reached out to smear the screen with his fingers, started crawling across the desk, grabbed a modem cable, bit the keyboard lead and generally wreaked havoc on my cluttered work surface.

Quality time at the keyboard

Jump Ahead Baby has been welcomed by those who view it as a means for parents to play more with their children and to make babies more comfortable with computers, without trying to teach them to program by the age of two.

I read reviews of the software on the Net by educationalists speaking of Vygotskian viewpoints and the Haugland/Shade Evaluation Scale, which apparently rated the program as not developmentally appropriate. They seemed to think that ordinary play with a baby was just as, if not more, beneficial.

But if you are tied to your computer and are prepared to tie down everything on your desk that's grabbable, a few minutes with your child on Jump Ahead Baby could be time well spent away from the usual surfing and spreadsheets.