Who doesn't remember summer camp? I know I do. I got to go to summer camp several times when I was a child, and I enjoyed it very much.

The truth is I'll bet that most of us have fond memories of going away to camp, and as children we never wondered how safe we were. We always just assumed that the adults who were there to keep us safe would do so.

However, sadly that is not the case today.

Did you know that not all states require kids' summer camps to have a license?

How about this?... Did you know that there are 28 states that don't require a criminal background check for camp workers?

Essentially, what this means is that your children may not be as safe as you thought they would be when you sent them to summer camp.

Here's what parents need to know about the safety of summer camps...

If deck games, endless buffets, and large crowds are things you try to avoid, then the standard 7-day cruise to the Bahamas may be a painful test of your ability to endure rather then an opportunity to relax and leave your day-to-day worries behind.

Your opportunity to be alone with your thoughts will quickly vanish into the endless crowds of people aboard an ocean cruise ship.

Cargo freighters, on the other hand, are all business. Delivering manufactured goods around the world, they slip into port for only the time required to exchange one load for another, and then it's back to sea heading to their next (sometimes exotic) destination.

Here are some tips for booking your first trip on a freighter ship...

Nowhere else in the world can you travel through 5 great fresh expanses of water so large you lose sight of land for days at a time.

A Great Lakes cruise will take you along the aquatic superhighway upon which much of the country's natural resources and farm products travel to market.

You can even follow the path of early fur trappers and settlers as they headed west from the east coast into the Heartland of America.

I've had a Yahoo email account since 1997, and for the most part I've been very happy with it.

There are some features on the new version that I'm not as happy with, however. For example, whenever you login to your email account now, it automatically opens up a chat room tab for everyone in your Contact List who happens to be online at the moment. I have a lot of people in my contact list, and this can be really annoying, and even slow down the program.

Fortunately, Yahoo allows you keep the Yahoo Classic version if you want to. In the past you just had to accept whatever changes they had made to their newest version. But apparently, with this newer version, I wasn't the only one that wasn't as enamoured with it.

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of using Yahoo email, as I see it...

I have a couple of different Twitter accounts, each with an entirely different audience based on very unique interests:

@FunDogs - fun dog tips for people with dogs

@FunHouseHome - helpful information for homeowners - fun home & garden tips

@FunTimesGuide - where the geek in me hangs out and I interact with people on a wide variety of topics

People who are interested in my dog-related tweets aren't necessarily interested in my geeky updates or my house & home tweets, so I needed a way to interact with each group separately.

When I'm at my computer, I use HootSuite to do that. When I'm on the go, I need an iPhone app that goes with me.

I had heard great things about both Twitterific Premium (also known as Twitterific 2.0) and Twittelator Pro (the version I downloaded was 2.2). So I purchased them both through the Apple Store and started comparing the apps for myself, side-by-side.

See which one is my favorite...

If you've ever taken a cruise to the Bahamas, or any other ocean cruise, you know that once you leave port most ocean cruises head out to sea. For a spectator activity, you can stand along the guardrail and stare out over the ocean -- looking at miles and miles of wide open ocean.

Aside from eating and gambling aboard the ship, you'll probably spend a good deal of time looking at that empty ocean -- which can get boring fairly quick.

Fortunately, river cruises operate on most of the major rivers throughout the United States, providing a whole different perspective on cruising.

For most of us, when we think of cruises a cheap Caribbean cruise probably comes to mind first.

Then you might imagine yourself on a fabulous Hawaiian cruise vacation.

They're all pretty standard fare as, far as cruises go. You've got your endless buffets, dinner & dance with the ship's captain, and port calls so you enjoy some time off the ship and buy trinkets to remember your trip.

Here's an idea...

Why not try something different? There are definitely some alternative cruising destinations worth considering. Some might even classify them as adventure cruises.

For some reason, these types of cruises just don't seem to get the same amount of advertising that the regional cruises do. I mean, when was the last time you saw an advertisement for an Antarctic cruise or an Arctic cruise? What about an exotic Amazon cruise or Nile River cruises?

Yes, Caribbean cruise vacations are fine, but there are plenty of other destinations to explore and enjoy. With that in mind, you may want to consider these alternative cruise destinations...