A virtual Easter egg is hidden on the Ames Electronic Village home page. Can you find it?

Ames is participating in the Third Annual Great Internet Easter Egg Hunt, hosted by USA CityLink and sponsored by the Branch Mall, where Internet users race online to find virtual Easter eggs scattered across cyberspace for real prizes.

“This is our first year participating in the virtual Easter egg hunt,” said Iacovos Zachariades, designer of the Ames Electronic Village.

Hidden virtual eggs have been placed in hundreds of locations across the Internet, including the Ames Electronic Village Web site.

CityLink, a national Web site that has links to all United States city Web sites, contacted Zachariades about having Ames participate in the egg hunt because he had registered the Ames Electronic Village with them.

The eggs are located only on city or state pages of information linked through the USA CityLink main home page and only at the Branch Mall URL, http://branchmall.com/.

“This is an excellent opportunity to expose Ames to the Internet community,” Zachariades said.

Contestants are to locate the eggs on several Web pages, write down the Web address of where they found them and send the list to CityLink. Contestants have until March 30 to locate as many eggs as they can, and send in the list. In the event of a tie, the user whose list is received first will be awarded the prize.

The event features a $1,000 cash prize donated by the Branch Mall, the Internet’s oldest online shopping mall, to the Net surfer who finds the most Easter eggs.

Second prize is a weekend in New Orleans’ famous French Quarter at the Place deArmes Hotel. The third prize is a weekend in Reno, Nevada at the Sands Regency Hotel Casino.

For those with Internet access, the Great Internet Easter Egg Hunt at CityLink can be reached at http://usacitylink.com/easter/ and at the Branch Mall at http://branchmall.com/.

The Ames Electronic Village Web site can be accessed at http://global-reach.com/ames.