Mitsukoshi, Shiseido, and Fujitsu have teamed up to bring a virtual, real-time makeover machine into Japanese department stores in order to give women a chance to test out a smorgasbord of shades on their virtual face before throwing down their hard earned loot.

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And this week along a stretch of border in Arizona, the government is bringing online a test of a high-tech virtual fence.

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Just one example: Signature Labs, a small start-up, is running a test of their new App with Neiman Marcus to create a virtual personal and highly-tailored shopping assistant using your iPhone.

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For online and blended courses, LearnSmart Labs offers the closest thing available to an actual physical laboratory experience, enabling students to put the concepts they have learned in class to the virtual test without requiring access to a brick-and-mortar lab.

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Automakers say they will continue using rubber-and-steel crash-test dummies indefinitely, but the virtual dummy offers a more flexible and possibly cheaper option.

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By January he had sold Levi's brass on a test of on-line sales in Canada, and in 60 days the virtual store was open for business.

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The casual nature of that relationship is reflected in Valve's attitude about releasing the new mode -- Team Fortress 2's VR-enabling update in the coming weeks is essentially a giant beta test in which Valve will measure and analyze the way TF2 players interact with virtual reality hardware.

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