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Zoo Park Inflatable Bouncer

The Zoo theme of this inflatable bouncer is carried throughout the inside and outside walls with colorful graphics representing elephants, monkey, and jungle vines! This bounce house features a one of a kind animal theme, (all in one) bouncer area, ball pit, slide, and hoop. Perfect for boys or girls this brightly colored structure is eye-catching with bright shades of green, blue and purples.

The hoop is a favorite activity and lots of fun because the kids have the opportunity to "shoot and score" when playing with the neoprene play ball that is included. The ball is about 6" and children will learn to take turns as they await their next opportunity to score.

Made from 420D fabric and tarpaulin floor construction this big toy is made to last. As soon as you start the blower the unit it will only take a couple of minutes to inflate and the kids can play on it. The dimensions when inflated are 10.5' x 9.8' x 6' high. There are stakes for anchoring into the ground and a repair kit is included just in case. This is one big toy that will entertain toddlers, young children and supply plenty of bouncing fun. The gift of a bounce house for the holidays would be a dream come true for any boy or girl.

Dianna, is always offering safety and education tips to parents and caregivers. She focused on parents, and wants them to properly teach children to play safe on equipment. She is also the Founder of BestPriceToys.com, a leading children's playground store, and educational toys website were the focus is on outdoor play and exercise for children.

Friday, 12-Nov-2010 03:05

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Pearl Jewelry - The Story of Pearl Hunters

As long as pearl jewelry have been known to people, they have been a highly sought commodity for their beauty. It's only in recent times however that the industry has taken the hunt for the perfect pearl to a whole different level. Today, the shiny orbs that we see on in display in jewelry stores have actually almost always been grown in farms.

That's a far cry from the dangerous extraction and collection methods used before the invention of modern technology. In the past, not more than 100 years ago, the only way to retrieve pearls was by diving in lakes, floods and the ocean to pick them up, one at the time. The unfortunate divers who'se job it was to do this, were often poor and lured by the relative large sums they could get. The diver would sometimes have to dive as deep as 100 feet on one single breath of air. In order to preserve air and to stay submerged the longest, the divers would hold on to heavy stones on the way down.

Naturally, this dangerous activity was reserved for the desperate or the powerless - in many cases slaves or extremely poor peasents. Today, this method is all but obsolete in most places of the world. The cheaper cultured pearls have become popular and are many times the only pearls available to the consumer.

There are however still a few isolated areas that practice this old art of pearl diving. Some of the finest natural pearl speciments come from the gulf of Bahrain. Here, divers still risk their health to retrieve what are considered the top of the crop in the world. In fact, Bahrain wants no part of the sale of cultured pearls, banned from trade. Bahrain is one of the few places on earth that does an active job in trying to preserve the natural habitat and waters from pollution.

It's an interesting story and one that continues to fascinate buyers around the world. Somehow, the beauty of the pearl grows when it's been retrieved from the depth of the ocean.

Friday, 12-Nov-2010 02:56

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Buying Pearl Jewelry Without Being Ripped Off

Buying pearl jewelry can be fun, exciting and confusing. Whether you're considering a gift of pearl jewelry for someone special or as a treat for yourself, take some time to learn the terms used in the industry. Here's some information to help you get the best quality pearl jewelry for your money, whether you're shopping in a traditional brick and mortar store or online.

Pearls

Natural or real pearls are made by oysters and other mollusks. Cultured pearls also are grown by mollusks, but with human intervention; that is, an irritant introduced into the shells causes a pearl to grow. Imitation pearls are man-made with glass, plastic, or organic materials.

Because natural pearls are very rare, most pearls used in jewelry are either cultured or imitation pearls. Cultured pearls, because they are made by oysters or mollusks, usually are more expensive than imitation pears. A cultured pearl's value is largely based on its size, usually stated in millimeters, and the quality of its nacre coating, which give it luster. Jewelers should tell your if the pearls are cultured or imitation. Some black, bronze, gold, purple, blue and orange pearls, whether natural or cultured, occur that way in nature; some, however, are dyed through various processes. Jewelers should tell you whether the colored pearls are naturally colored, dyed or irradiated.

Clams, oysters, mussels and many other mollusks with limy shells are known to produce pearls. But very few kinds yield gem pearls of jeweler's quality. The pearl is an abnormal growth of mother-of-pearl, or nacre, imbedded in the soft bodies of these shellfish. It is built up, layer upon layer, in the same way as nacre is added to the lining of the growing shell and always has the same color and luster. For example, over the country, hundreds of good-sized pearls are found each year in the oysters we eat. Unfortunately these have no commercial value regardless of whether they have been cooked or not because they are dull opaque white or purple like the shell of the parent oyster. In recent times almost all pearls of gem quality come from the oriental pearl oyster which has a bright shimmering translucent nacre.

A pearl starts growing when some irritating foreign substance such as a sand grain, bit of mud, parasite or other object becomes lodged in the shell-producing gland called the mantle. Pearls formed in the soft flesh where nacre can be added on all sides are most likely to be spherical and the most highly prized. By far the great majority are flattened or variously distorted and have little value. Size, color, luster and freedom from flaws are other essential qualities. Unlike other gems, such as diamonds, pearls have an average life of only about 50 years. In time the small amount of water in a pearl's make-up is lost and its surface cracks. Because they are mostly lime, necklaces which are worn often are injured by the acid secretions of the human skin.

Monday, 8-Nov-2010 01:49

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Pearl Jewelry - The Story of Pearl Hunters

As long as pearl jewelry have been known to people, they have been a

highly sought commodity for their beauty. It's only in recent times

however that the industry has taken the hunt for the perfect pearl to

a whole different level. Today, the shiny orbs that we see on in

display in jewelry stores have actually almost always been grown in

farms.

That's a far cry from the dangerous extraction and collection methods

used before the invention of modern technology. In the past, not more

than 100 years ago, the only way to retrieve pearls was by diving in

lakes, floods and the ocean to pick them up, one at the time. The

unfortunate divers who'se job it was to do this, were often poor and

lured by the relative large sums they could get. The diver would

sometimes have to dive as deep as 100 feet on one single breath of

air. In order to preserve air and to stay submerged the longest, the

divers would hold on to heavy stones on the way down.

Naturally, this dangerous activity was reserved for the desperate or

the powerless - in many cases slaves or extremely poor peasents.

Today, this method is all but obsolete in most places of the world.

The cheaper cultured pearls have become popular and are many times

the only pearls available to the consumer.

There are however still a few isolated areas that practice this old

art of pearl diving. Some of the finest natural pearl speciments come

from the gulf of Bahrain. Here, divers still risk their health to

retrieve what are considered the top of the crop in the world. In

fact, Bahrain wants no part of the sale of cultured pearls, banned

from trade. Bahrain is one of the few places on earth that does an

active job in trying to preserve the natural habitat and waters from

pollution.

It's an interesting story and one that continues to fascinate buyers

around the world. Somehow, the beauty of the pearl grows when it's

been retrieved from the depth of the ocean.

Monday, 8-Nov-2010 01:44

Email | Share |

Buying Pearl Jewelry Without Being Ripped Off

Wednesday, 21-Oct-2009 05:58

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Birth papers the 'Achilles heel'

Cape Town - Birth certificates are the "Achilles heel" of his department, home affairs director-general Mavuso Msimang said on Tuesday.

Briefing the media at Parliament, he told journalists it had become very difficult to establish the bona fides of people from the former homeland areas of the country who were applying for birth certificates.

"Arising from our history... a lot of places didn't have an ID system, and when it was agreed to freshwater pearl ring come together, you found a lot of older people coming to register for birth.

"This has been taken advantage of by people who are not supposed to get documents, who claim that they were born at some place - Transkei, KwaZulu, wherever - and did not have an ID.

"It becomes very difficult to establish their bona fides," he said.

Birth certificate imperative

Special panels had been set up to examine applications for late birth registrations.

"The birth certificate is the Achilles Heel in the corruption scenario, because to get an ID, and any other document, you have to pearl necklace have a birth certificate."

Earlier this year, the department had launched a campaign to ensure that all South Africans below the age of 16 had a birth certificate.

"We are hoping that two years from now we will not have to deal with late birth registrations.

"While everyone has a right to an ID, anyone who doesn't have an ID two years from now, will find it difficult [to obtain one].

Given a chance now

Msimang warned that in 2011 his department will not be "rushed" into giving anyone an ID because they have been given an opportunity to blister pearl get one now.

Msimang said over half the ID documents issued by his department each day were re-issues.

"[A total of] 54% of the people who receive ID books everyday, are re-issues, which says a little bit of how we care for our documents."

He said the department issued about two million IDs a year.

Asked if this implied that there were more than a million identity documents lost each year, Msimang replied: "Re-issues happen pearl jewelry Chian... as a result of a change of name - people getting married, or divorced, or some other reason - but the vast majority of these IDs are issued to people who have misplaced theirs, or lost them."

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Wednesday, 21-Oct-2009 05:53

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Hyper-local is lekker

Sometimes we internet geeks have a way of overcomplicating things. Take the word "hyper-local". It may sound like something out of Star Trek ("Scotty, set phasers to hyper-local!") - but it really means any service or media related to a small geographic area.

We're talking about stuff like squabbles over potholes, sports results from schools and local gossip. If that mix sound familiar, it's because you probably already read about it in the free community newspaper that gets delivered to pearl earrings you weekly.

Until now the internet hasn't been very good at penetrating this niche and so community papers have thrived while their larger siblings have struggled to remain relevant.

But hyper-local may be starting to come of age in the USA, if mergers and acquisitions are anything to go by. In mid-August media conglomerate MSNBC snapped up EveryBlock.com, an experimental hyper-local news service that mines municipal data for use by citizens.

Then on 1st September Examiner.com announced it was buying NowPublic.com - a competitor in the aggregated community news (aka hyper-local) market - for an estimated $25m.

But despite all this chequebook capitalism will enough people really consume online community news to turquoise necklace make it a viable business model? Surely news that local isn't really news to a community who have already heard it by word of mouth?

And just where does this hyper-locality end? Will we have a niche publication for 23 Elm Road where the breaking news feed is "Dad will be 15 minutes late" and the event for the week is "Visit Grandma - no whining"?

Facetiousness aside, community newspapers do serve an important function. Larger papers cannot afford to cover important local issues, and local businesses cannot afford to advertise to an entire city (or province), particularly when they only serve a neighbourhood.

But as worthy as this function is, it is just as much under threat from the internet as the rest of printed media. Bits and bytes are cheaper, faster and more interactive than paper. The fact that the internet currently does a bad job of hyper-local is almost a guarantee it will improve.

But the biggest threat to established community media is not computers but their smaller cousins, "smart" cellphones. These mobile windows into the internet are the future of hyper-local because citizens can both read and report news wherever they are. All that's missing is the technology to pearl strand wholesale structure their conversations and reports into a useful whole.

And this is the key to the future of citizen journalism. It's not the community-minded die-hards who do news for free (although they will always be a part of the mix) - it's the collective voice, mediated by technology, to which everyone makes tiny daily contributions.

So if Fred is stuck in traffic on Elm Street he can tell the whole community in seconds, and virtually for free. And when Ntokozo gets a batch of beautiful fresh tomatoes she can let her customers know immediately.

And while online advertising is still a debatable business model for larger publications, hyper-local is proving to freshwater pearl earrings be extremely lucrative. Some estimates put local online advertising spend in the USA at $13.3bn for 2009.

So the situation looks win-win to everyone except professional community journalists who would appear to be out of a job. But in reality they will probably be more in demand than ever. They simply need to shift their focus from reporting information to filtering or "curating" it. After all, who knows the community better than they do?

- Alistair is Social Media Manager at 20FourLabs.

Wednesday, 21-Oct-2009 05:47

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The cheque is in the (e)mail

There are few things more annoying than being paid by cheque. You get to stand in a queue at the bank and then wait 10 business days to get your cash. Awesome. How much better would it be if you could just snap a photo of the cheque with your cellphone and hit send? Fantasy? Nope - reality.

Well, to be precise, it's reality if you happen to freshwater pearl bracelet bank with USAA, an American financial services company. And you need an iPhone. So apart from these two tiny hurdles, it's a reality.

Annoying details aside, the technology really is astounding. You literally snap a photo of both sides of the cheque, hit "send", and you're finished. You can even throw away the cheque afterwards - it's that reliable.

And this isn't some zany experimental bank run by sandal-wearing Californians - USAA has seven million customers (most of them in the armed forces) and is based in Texas. If a bank for army veterans in the American South can do it, other banks sure as heck can.

Even the iPhone problem is freshwater pearl a red herring. The iPhone has become like the Mercedes S Class of phones - the cool features you see on it now will be standard on all phones within a couple of years.

The thing is, has this convenience come too late? Cheques are dying out. They're something old people and municipalities use - a quaint 20th century technology with the same mechanical charm as fax machines and Model T Fords.

It's pretty remarkable they ever worked in the first place. "We've never met before but here's a piece of paper with an entirely theoretical amount of money written on it. I'll take this expensive suit / meal / camera and disappear from your life forever. Bye!"

No, if there's a future it's in gadgets like the Square iPhone Payment System - a handy doodad that lets you accept credit card payments via your overpriced designer phone. You swipe the card as usual and then sign the receipt using the touch screen. It sends customers their receipts via e-mail and even geo-tags the sale location.

But the cheque-laden status quo isn't a technology problem. The technology to pearl earrings wholesale photograph and process cheques remotely has been around since the late 90s when the internet took root and high quality digital cameras became commonplace (and arguably even before that).

It's really a willingness problem. Banks (and people) around the world would rather kill trees and burn oil to transport millions of little bits of paper around the globe than contemplate changing their outdated ways.

So banish that evil cheque book and kneel, as I do, at the altar of twisted pearl necklace the all powerful Electronic Fund Transfer. The planet will thank you.

- Alistair is Social Media Manager at 20FourLabs.

Wednesday, 21-Oct-2009 04:02

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The information super tollgate

Right now, in an ordinary office tower a few blocks from the Whitehouse, the future of the internet is being decided. Will it remain a vast, messy, democratic source of information for public good, or will it become a collection of exclusive enclaves - digital country clubs with high walls and even higher fees?

The office in question is occupied by the Federal Communications Commission that regulates all electronic communication in the USA, including broadband.

They are currently reviewing the rules that govern how internet service providers (ISPs) and other broadband carriers (like cable TV companies) control the flow of data around and between pearl jewelry their networks.

If this doesn't sound particularly significant, think about it this way: without rules there's nothing to stop one network from blocking certain kinds of data from another. So if you're on provider A and they have a service that competes with a cheaper offering on provider B, they can simply block access to the competing service and force you to use their offering.

This is may seem like quite an extreme example but Comcast, the USA’s largest cable network, are currently suing the FCC for the right to block or "throttle" (artificially slow down) the bandwidth of certain users.

These users were exchanging large amounts of data over "peer to peer" networks - behaviour which cost Comcast money. They have claimed that they block such services because they are full of pirated copies of music, movies and other goodies but most commentators see this as a convenient excuse to coral necklace drive down their costs.

But this flies against one of the founding principles of the internet - that all traffic should be treated equally. This is vitally important because it ensures that information and services are available to everyone who can connect - regardless of income or geographical location.

This principle, called "network neutrality" (or "net neutrality" for short), means that a nine-year-old in a library in Bangalore has access to the same information online as a billionaire in Silicone Valley.

So far, so utopian. But the network operators see things from another perspective. Why should the occasional user be charged the same flat rate as the geek who spends all day online? Why should video content have to Keishi pearl sit in the same queue as email which isn’t remotely as time sensitive?

They have a point, but luckily there is a middle ground. Many net neutrality advocates, including Tim Berners-Lee (founder of the World Wide Web), believe that network operators should be allowed to charge for higher quality access - as long as it’s not at the expense of other users and networks.

Regardless of what network operators may feel, the FCC's position was made abundantly clear by their new (Obama appointed) chairperson Julius Genachowski in a speech on 21st September. Openness will be preserved, discrimination will be banned and transparency will be enforced. All in all it’s a home run for net neutrality.

Why does any of this matter to pearl pendant us bandwidth starved South Africans? Simple: we have lived through the polar opposite of net neutrality, also known as the Telkom monopoly. We have suffered the 500MB data caps and the two-day outages. We know exactly how important openness and competition is.

Now that our broadband market is finally opening up we have a chance to push for the same rules that have made the USA the most innovative internet market in the world. As consumers, network operators and governments we have a chance to make a difference. Let's not let it pass us by.

- Alistair is Social Media Manager at 20FourLabs.

Send your comments to cultured pearl ring Alistair

Disclaimer: News24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24.

Wednesday, 21-Oct-2009 03:53

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Blogger, can you spare $11 000?

"US Federal Trade Commission to Fine Bloggers $11 000" screamed the headlines gleefully from traditional media this week. "FTC - F**k You and Your Mother" came the predictable response from the blogosphere.

What the storm in this particular teacup obscures is the publication on October 5 of the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) new guidelines on endorsements and testimonials. They've widened the rules for the first time since 1980 to include things like celebrity endorsements, comments on talk shows and, yes, reviews on blogs.

It's not as though the FTC are going to cultured pearl ring be rushing around fining bloggers who give, say, the new James Blunt album positive reviews (even though that may be a crime against culture) - all you need to do is disclose that you got a freebie (or some cash) to write about the product or service and you're good to go.

But there's no way the blogosphere was going to give up this chance to make a fuss - it's the sort of David and Goliath stuff that's great for attracting readers (not to mention an opportunity to have a good whinge).

And perhaps they have a point. Isn't R80 000 a bit steep for amateur navel gazers and cat fanciers?

But that's just the thing - in the US blogs came of age long ago, and some of them wield more influence than increasingly anaemic daily newspapers. Luckily there aren't any fines for being pompous or boring, or half of those papers would be slapped with cultured freshwater pearl fines weekly.

In fact many people don't realise, or even care, that they are reading a blog. If it's well-written and well-designed, they are likely to take it as (or even more) seriously than a major media brand ("They're independent - they must be honest").

And there's an even thornier issue lurking here - what's the definition of a blog? The Huffington Post started out as a political blog, but now it's a fully-fledged online newspaper that employs over 100 people. Exactly when did it stop being a blog and become a newspaper? I'm glad I'm not the one making that call.

I think this is all just a ploy to wholesale pearl jewelry boost the FTC's rankings in Google. They're tired of playing third fiddle to sexier agencies like Homeland Security and the Securities and Exchange Commission. I mean, how many movies have you seen which feature FTC agents? "Stay calm Ma'am -we're here to inspect your vehicle's warranty agreement."

Anyway, the FTC clarified their position and reassured ruffled bloggers that they wouldn't be dishing out daily spot fines, and that there would be plenty of warnings before they did. There was some mumbling about police states and big brother, but the blogosphere are already looking for their next hit of controversy.

The thing that most of them seem to tin cup pearl necklace have missed is that the FTC ruling gives their medium more credibility than it's ever had before. If a government agency has powers to fine you, you're a serious medium. Not bad for amateur navel gazers and cat fanciers.