It just figures that I would run across a totally awesome, cordless and rechargeable vaccuum cleaner that fits in with my green lifestyle, just 2 weeks after purchasing a new cleaner. When my old windtunnel bagless vaccuum cleaner died (it literally just shut down and never came back on again), I sorta panicked. I couldn’t afford the cleaner I wanted from the store, so I had to go online to find the best deal from Amazon. Meanwhile I felt like a total drudge, as I had to sweep my entire apartment for DAYS!! The dust was incredibly annoying, and I might have saved on electricity, but my broom simply is not up to par when it comes to cleaning my house. It certainly served to give me a new perspective on what it must have been like for our poor grandmothers, and how hard it was to keep their homes looking beautiful and clean. I cannot imagine working so hard when there are so many more important things to be spending time and energy on.

So, now we move into the world of modern technology, and for those who love to keep their homes tidy, with lightweight epuipment that carries the power to get the job done we need the best! The new AccuCharge Stick Vac and Hand Vac use 70% less energy… making AccuCharge the first cordless cleaning technology to earn Energy Star approval. I love the idea of saving energy, and these lightweight marvels would simplify the art of housecleaning to the point of making this an enjoyable experience instead of a chore.

You can surely bet that I am going to be putting my favourite choice called the Kruz by Dirt Devil at the top of my list of must haves. Here is a brief description… The KRUZ’s Soft Glide Technology delivers effortless cleaning of dry hard floor surfaces. This cordless vacuum sweeper’s Soft Touch Bumper maneuvers gently around furniture and along baseboards to quickly and safely clean even hard to reach areas.

Notable Features:

* The New Shape of Clean
* Soft Glide Technology provides 360 degree free form motion
* Soft Touch Bumper protects furniture and base boards
* Designed to address your hard surface cleaning needs
* Powerful 12 Volt Motor
* 2-Year Warranty

Perhaps my sister needs a new vac, and I can just give her my new one and have a perfect excuse to get what I really want.

If you enjoy Adventure and Fantasy than I truly believe you would enjoy The Kingdoms of Arcania.

This MMORPG is for up to eleven players, each with their own kingdom. Yours to command are valiant heroes, brilliant generals, an influential noble court, diabolical agents, powerful sorcerers, clerics, engineers, shaman, and necromancers. Your holdings include towering fortresses, bustling cities, towns, and villages populated by more than a score of different fantasy races. Your army has well trained units with thousands of possible combinations of fantasy races, weapons, armor, shields, and mounts.

You might command Mistwood’s Chosen – elite Elven archers with mastery in the forest, or perhaps The Pride of Amazonia – fierce female cavalry on elite horses, Warg-riding Goblins from the hills of Minotaur Gorge, or countless others! Your characters will adventure for powerful magical items like enchanted swords and rings of power, overcoming demons, liches, and perhaps even subduing a mighty dragon that will then serve as your envy-inspiring flying mount.

Opposing you are up to ten human rivals each seeking to outwit you, to defeat you on the fields of battle, to assassinate your leaders and claim for themselves the very throne you seek. Some of these you may choose to trade, share information, or even ally with. Victory is no set path, and each kingdom requires its own strategy, as well as adjusting to the unfolding strategies of your rival kings.

In this fun online game you must be ready for anything… are you up to the challenge??

Have you ever wanted to learn the tricks of the trade, when it comes to digital photography? Modern technology has made this an art form in which just about anyone can master if they truly have a passion for it. This is something I would definately be interested in learning more about, and I would love to get some hot tips and advice from the pros. Good thing I found a great Digital Photography Forum which is run by a couple of guys who really seem to have the art of digital photograghy down.

Now, just so you know, there is a small fee to be a member of their Photography Forum. Yet, if you have a true passion for digital photography, whether as a career or just a hobby, this may be a great place to help you get started. It just may be in your best interest to take some time to visit and consider joining their Inner Circle Forum to see what they have to offer to help you with your photography needs. They have some really great testimonials from folks who are pretty happy with the advice they have gotten, so if you are serious about taking your digital experiences to the next level, it won’t hurt to check them out.

For myself, although I am totally into taking lots of pictures of my family and friends, I truly have a passion for catching the beauty that can be found in nature. Everywhere I go I love to take pictures to capture the magic and grace of all that is natural and pure in the wilderness. Learning about taking advantage of light and such would be a great way to enhance the total experience. This is something I had wanted to pursue when I was younger, and I just may look into this a bit further to follow a Dream I had let go so long ago. I will be looking for advice on a great camera that is ideal for outdoor shots, so I can master my own digital experience!

Okay, just a quick heads up to those wondering why I am not posting here for the next two weeks. I will be camping out in Goldendale WA for 16 days catching up with family and friends, and attending several Lakota Ceremonies. I was hoping to prepare a few posts ahead of time, yet I just didn’t get a chance. So I will be back after my adventures in Nature, and after playing in the dirt for a while, I will be ready for some more virtual news and fun stuff to pass along and explore. Meanwhile, I hope everyone has a jolly good time… remember to enjoy yourselves and each other!

Teri
~

I was just sitting here contemplating how my virtual adventures started so very long ago. I had only had my first computer for a month or so, and I was determined to balance out my work with plenty of play time as well. My son and I both checked around, and found out about a popular game called Dark Age of Camelot. Now this was a virtual reality that jumped right out at me, with my love of Ancient History and such, and having the chance to roleplay was truly exciting. I was pretty serious about the roleplaying thing, and had such fun! I developed a persona and ran with it. Running around exploring, battling evil creatures, and making lots of new friends satisfied my adventurous spirit for years. It is simply amazing how much fun one can have in a Virtual World such as this!

Truly, although I loved to solo my way through the realms seeking adventure and challenging myself, it was pretty wonderful hooking up with new friends to help with quests and to take down particularly tough enemies. The comraderie and interactions with fellow characters helped bring a realistic feeling to the whole experience. It is always great to find a good escape when real Life starts to drag us down, or when we just need to have some fun and kick some bootie. Although I am really pretty responsible, at heart I am still young, and this girl just likes to have fun! Wow… just thinking about it makes me want to download the game again just to check out what’s new and to see if I can find some of my old buddies adventuring through the realms. These online MMORPG’s have a way of bringing people from all walks of Life closer together to more fully enjoy our fantasies.

Well then, that’s how my online adventures started, and although since then I have explored new Worlds, I will save those stories for another day. I would love to hear about how other folks found their way into the Worlds of Virtual Reality online, and how the experience has affected your reality. Truly I have so much more exploring to do, and look forward to each new Adventure!

Have you ever been frustrated with annoying scratches and nicks on your favourite gadgets? For myself, I like to keep my things in top condition and looking good, so when I found out about these sweet little iphone screen protectors I was pretty hot to check them out. ZAGG’s invisibleSHIELD™ is an exceptionally clear and virtually indestructible film that will protect your iPhone from unsightly scratches. The exclusive, patented film – with nano-memory™ technology – covers and shields your device, keeping it as pristine as the day you took it out of the box. Now, how cool is that?

Now here’s the kicker… these shields work not only with Cell Phones, yet they are also good for Digital Cameras, Gaming Devices, GPSs, iPods, Laptops, Media Players, PDAs and Watches, covering many different brands.

Let me mention some key points…

The precision pre-cut invisibleSHIELD applies directly to your iPhone, or other favourite gadget, providing the toughest, most durable protection you will find. The invisibleSHIELD has its origins in the military, where it was used to protect high-speed helicopter blades from dust, dirt and debris. Now you can use that same powerful technology to protect your iPhone.

The invisibleSHIELD is only .2 millimeters thick making it the slimmest iPhone skin or iPhone cover of its kind. It is so tough that they back it with a lifetime guarantee. So, if it ever does wear or scratch, they will replace it for free, for the life of your device. And if you ever need to remove the invisibleSHIELD, no problem; it comes off clean and leaves no sticky residue.

Considering the many valuable uses this tough little shield provides, I would consider it a definate must have to keep my electronic gadgets in tip top shape!

I was busy searching among the free RPG’s online to find a new fun game to play with my daughter, and I ran across AdventureQuest. It looks pretty good, so I would appreciate any comments or feedback on this game from anyone who may have played it. It is free, as I said, and we do have the option to pay a small one-time fee to open up some extra features if we wish. 

There appears to be lots of quests, monsters and cool items to discover. As there is nothing to download, I will be checking it out to see for myself what the buzz is about. They have a Martial Artists class to train for 25 possible abilities, and an all new Darkovia Stone Mansion house! Comes with aerial views, more storage, stables with an awesome now Dark Steed mount, and the new Bone Smasher mace weapon! Sounds interesting, that’s for sure!! LOL

The three base character classes (Fighter, Mage and Rogue) are open for everyone. Several advanced classes are now open, including Ninja, Knight, and Wizard, Dragonslayer and Vampireslayer! COMING SOON: Martial Artist, Archmage and more!

Anyone up for an Adventure?

Whilst cruising around the net, I found something interesting that brought back memories from my childhood. I really hadn’t given much thought to wonder if Cher was still touring. Apparently she still has quite a good following. I do like a few of her songs and find a certain admiration for someone who has enjoyed a very successful and fulfilling career. I am also aware that she has been involved in Charitable and Humanitarian efforts. After appearing in the movie Mask, she served as National Chairperson and Honorary Spokesperson of the Children’s Craniofacial Association. Over the years while touring, she frequently donated concert tickets to families and non-profit groups for children and youth with facial deformities. In 1993 Cher participated in a humanitarian effort to Armenia, (where her father was born) bringing much needed food and medical supplies and touring the war-torn region of Karabakh. In 1998 she co-hosted the annual Amfar AIDS Benefit at the Cannes Film Festival with Elizabeth Taylor, among other things.

I must say she has quite an impressive set of accomplishments, which I would like to list as follows…

Among her career accomplishments in music, television and film, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award and three Golden Globe Awards among others.

Cher rose to prominence in 1965 as one half of the pop/rock duo Sonny & Cher. She subsequently established herself as a solo recording artist, releasing 25 albums, contributing to numerous compilations, and tallying 34 Billboard Top 40 entries in the United States during her career, both as a solo artist and with Sonny. These include eighteen Top 10 singles and five number one singles. Cher has had 16 Top 10 hits in the UK Singles Chart between 1965 and 2003, four of which reached number one.

She became a television star in the 1970s and a film actress in the 1980s. In 1987 she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the romantic comedy Moonstruck.

With a career lasting over 40 years, Cher is an enduring pop icon and one of the most popular female artists in music history. She has sold, as a solo artist, 200 million records worldwide and 75 million as Sonny and Cher. She is one of the biggest-selling artists of all time.

Well then, for all the Cher fans out there, sources tell me that Cher tickets in Las Vegas are available for her upcoming tour. Her new show is coming to Caesars Palace in Las Vegas (replacing Celine Dion). Her show is expected to start at the beginning of May 2008. This would be a great treat, so don’t miss it!

My daughter and I take turns searching for fun activities to share online. I am always interested in what she is up to online of course, yet as we have a lot in common, it is easy for her to draw me into her fun games. She is so lucky, as I tell her often, in that there is so much one can do online that I could only wish was there when I was little. Born with great imaginations, we love to travel through the fantastic worlds, exploring and seeking new adventures.

Well then, my little S has a certain fascination with the World of Neopets. Not only must she strive to feed her pet to keep it alive, she must earn points to find a suitable place to dwell. She can purchase a home, decorate and design it to her preferences, depending upon how many points one has to spend. She can even create a virtual garden… sweet! It is her wish to allow her neopet to live in the Faerielands. She can send her neopet to an Inn when she is going to be away for a while to keep her pet alive while she is gone. She can travel around the neopet planet of Neopia, playing games and visiting the various shops in search of food, clothing and decorations for her humble abode. What joy it is to play the different wheels in the cities… the Wheel of Excitement, the Wheel of Knowledge, the Wheel of Mediocrity, and the Wheel of Monotony. You can either win a fantastic prize or suffer the consequences, so take a chance and spin the wheel! LOL

So, if you are full of imagination and on the lookout for new adventures, I would highly recommend entering the World of Neopets. I am quite certain you will not be disappointed, and will find many, many games to play as you explore and create a colourful world of fantasy of your own. I cannot possibly give the amount of fun you can have the proper justice this World deserves, so you will just have to see for yourself. If you have already experienced this sweet little World, I would be happy to hear of it, so don’t be shy! By the way, my daughters favourite games to play within the neopet world is Edna’s Shadow, Petpetsitter, Extreme Herder, Faerie Cloud Racers and Meerca Chase II… although, she loves so many of the games that she says it is hard to choose. Now here I go (she has me convinced) to create an account for myself and join in the fun!

There are many instances where it may be necessary to limit access to certain areas by creating car barriers. Whether it be a place reserved for foot or bike travel only, or a public space in which maintenence traffic is needed. As for the latter, it is highly convenient to have collapsable or perhaps locking barriers in place. Businesses may have good reason to place these barriers strategically to provide security and protection against unwanted vehicle access.

I can think of so many instances in which this form of traffic control, these high quality collapsing, locking, and even telescopic barriers, would be a necessary asset in providing safety. Perhaps you would like to take a good look at Traffic Guard Direct to see if they have the traffic control devices that will serve to fulfill your needs.

I am having such a wonderful time exploring the Worlds of Virtual Reality as this technology unfolds and develops. It never ceases to amaze me how much we can actually do with this knowledge, which I firmly believe comes through from technology our ancestors once weilded and is just submerged within our subconcious minds, before unknown disasters struck to bury this wisdom until humans developed enough to regain this valuable information. This is an exciting time we live in, and I do hope we hold this Earth together long enough to manifest so many yet unrealized benefits to this amazing technology.

I would like to invite those interested in learning about one of the finest state of the art platforms on the planet, that is ideal for educational and academic solutions with Virtual Worlds, brought to us by Multiverse. They provide a complete Virtual World platform built on widely-used technology standards such as Java, XML, Python, and Cg/HLSL shader languages; No need for your team to learn proprietary languages or technologies.

FEATURES

The Multiverse World Browser, our client application, runs on Windows XP and Vista and includes a state-of-the-art 3D engine that supports “next-gen” rendering features, such as normal and specular maps. Key features include:

* Paging scene manager, which enables large detailed terrain while minimizing graphics load
* Full shader APIs to implement a wide variety of visual effects
* Ability to set the skybox via scripts
* Realistic tree rendering through integration of SpeedTree RT
* Support for multiple real-time lights such as ambient, directional, and point light sources
* Particle effects, terrain decals, and texture modulative shadows
* Client animation system that avoids animation artifacts due to network latency
* Extensive Python scripting API that provides programmatic access to all features of the client, world simulation, and 3D scene
* Scriptable character creation framework

Please visit the Academic and Educations Solutions from Multiverse to learn more about the full list of available features in creating Virtual Worlds. Truly, I have no affiliation with this company… I just love sharing great information when I run across it. I really feel this is a great resource worth checking into for those talented and creative minds who wish to build great new Virtual Worlds to share with our fellow Earth travelers.

What an exciting age we live in! Although I am totally into nature and all things natural, the flip side of my nature has a passion for futuristic technology as well. I love to play video and online roleplaying games, and the Worlds of Virtual Reality totally fascinate me! That said, I would like to pass along some Virtual World News.

Virtual Worlds Expo, coming this September 3-4, 2008 in Los Angeles, is dedicated to helping businesses harness the power of virtual worlds to engage with their customers, partners and employees. Conference agenda will include consumer worlds, enterprise worlds, investment and strategy, education uses of virtual worlds, virtual law and visionary/future development. Stay tuned for more details.

As the World of Faerie is quite popular with young audiences (and old as well.. hehehe), I thought it may be interesting to share one of Disneys latest wonders from the world of Fantasy and Adventure.

Disney Online has created a studio to focus on its growing commitment to Virtual Worlds as well as games and online social communities. The new group, Disney Online Studios, will include several of Disney Online’s teams, including the creators of Disney.com XD and the company’s virtual-reality studio that was responsible for Disney’s Toontown Online and Pirates of the Caribbean Online.

Disney Online has recently announced a new online world, Pixie Hollow, based on Disney’s Fairies franchise, which is part of an effort to begin offering Virtual Worlds aimed at fans of specific Disney franchises.

Now this is something my daughter will be totally crazy about! One can create their own Fairy and play games of tag, solve puzzes, visit a secret world and much, much more! We can even download our choice of a fabulous screen saver to totally personalize our very own magical space… how cool is that! Create your very own fairy page for free and let the Magic begin. What are you waiting for? Fly on over and enrich your imagination in the amazingly beautiful and fairylicious World of Pixie Hollow. Suitable for all family members… do you believe?

When I was little I used to love to play store with my sister. We had our little cash register and play money… well, you know. Things have certainly changed, and I just love how fun it is to interact in a virtual way. Perhaps you too like this sort of thing and are up to an intellectual challenge. It is called Video Store Clerk.

The Game

You are the Video Store Clerk and must guess how real customers like certain movies.

Customers

In each turn a customer’s profile will appear on the computer screen, showing how they have rated past rentals.

Guess

Based on their past ratings, you must guess how that customer rated the feature film by selecting the number of stars.

Levels

Each level has 10 customers. If you guess seven customer ratings correctly, you move onto the next level.

The blue bar at the top of the screen displays how many correct answers you have gotten. Correct answers are worth more on each consecutive level.

Ratings

Remember, the ratings are based on real customers, so you are guessing at how each one of them actually rated their movies, not on your personal feelings about the film.

The Experiment

This game is part of an experiment to see if humans can be better problem solvers than computers. Your answers actually help the game get better results.

Well then, I am not finished, yet I am enjoying the game thus far. It is quite interesting to see how well I can guess an average rating, and I am doing really good. Are you up to the challenge? Try it out and have fun!