Hilary Duff has one, Nicole Richie has one and the Olsen twins have one each. The Spy Bag by Fendi is pure fashion: beautiful, stylish and most important of all, desirable. Created by Karl Lagerfield, the creative director of Fendi, this is not a classic handbag in the style of Chanel or Louis Vuitton. It does not ooze with the cold, clear feminine lines of old school handbags. Instead it screams out sassy, smart and willing to get you want whatever the cost. The true handbag for our celebrity obsessed culture where brainless nobodies like Paris Hilton fill our newspapers.

The Spy Bag Who Loved Me

The Italian fashion house Fendi was founded in 1918 but it wasn’t until the arrival of Karl Lagerfield in the 1960’s that the company became the fashion brand we know and love. The Spy Bag is just one of his many successes that started with his redesign of the Fendi logo. The distinctive double F logo, know as the Zucca, made the brand far more recognizable but it was the high quality leather goods that Lagerfield designed in the 60’s that made the brand. Picked up by high priced American department stores such as Bloomingdale’s, Fendi’ goods were now available to the fashion conscious, wealthy American woman with nothing better to do that spend their husband’s money.

Back to Black Bag

The crack addicted, crowd punching, walking disaster zone with a golden voice, Amy Winehouse was paid half a million dollars for doing a private gig at the opening of a Fendi store in Paris. You can see and exclusive video of Amy on the Fendi home page, www.Fendi.com. However there is little else of use on the Fendi website because it looks pretty but doesn’t have anything useful on it such as details of its products. Having something as crassly commercial as a list of stockists or suppliers does not fit the haute couture image despite the fact it sells ready made, off-the-peg clothes.

I Spy Bag

The most noticeable thing about the black Spy Bag is that the people who carry them do not fit the image. When you think of a spy, you think James Bond. Suave, sophisticated, stylish with a beautiful woman on his arm. If you look at the people carrying Fendi’s bags, they don’t match the image. Fendi is a brand carried by women who aspire to be the Bond girl, who want to be in with in-crowd but who fail to carry it off. Part of the problem is that Fendi’s brand is a target of counterfeiters on a large scale. Because the bags and all of Fendi’s range is available through high street stores, the average shopper may not realize they are buying a fake. If you are offered a Rolex for $99.99 you know it is a fake but how do you tell is a $99.99 Fendi bag is real or counterfeit. Not that it makes much difference. Both real and fake are made in chinese sweatshops. The only real difference is that if you buy a real one, your money goes into the belly of the multinational LVMH monster whereas if you buy the fake, honest criminals get your money.

At the moment the site is very basic blog with only one or two posts but it will be growing very rapidly. It is involving extensive planning as there are a large number of keywords available but generally the amount of traffic they each attract is small. So our policy is one of creating sticky content (see Friendly Affordable SEO) but will require as vast amount writing. Of course links mater as well as content so I will be making extensive use of Micelife.

The reason why Search Engine Optimisation is so hard to master is that it involves so many different elements. You have to find the keywords, you need to be able to write SEO friendly copy, your link strategy has to be top-notch and you need to be able to convert those hard-won visitors into customers. One skill perhaps brings all of this together: SEO Web Site Design.

The SEO Design Problem

Designing a web site to be search engine friendly is easy. The problem is designing one to be search engine and human friendly. SEO is all about Google’s and Yahoo’s computers. Forget all about CSS and graphics. Simply get the right words in the right place supported by the right links and bingo, you will be flying high in the search engines. But it won’t do you any good if everyone who comes to the site immediately hits the Back button. This is why SEO web site design is such a skill. Balancing the need of the Google’s computers against the needs of your human visitors.

An SEO Web Site Design Template

Achieving the balance between these two competing forces is best done with quality content focused on a single subject or keyword. Each and every page needs to have its SEO elements: Keywords in the URL and the HTML Title and Meta tags; articles of 750 words that mention the keywords once in every paragraph; short headings that use the keyword; and incoming links using the keyword as their anchor text. (For other key SEO points, see the SEO Web Design Checklist).

All the carefully crafted SEO needs to be built on genuine content. The 750 word article has to be about the subject, well written and above all, informative. This is the human side of SEO Web Site Design. Google won’t know if the article makes sense but a human will and its humans that are your customers, not Google’s computers.

Chris Tregenza is a writer on SEO and has a range of free SEO articles online.

As our understanding of how the brain works and how we learned developed through the 20th century, scientists become interested how play is an important part of learning. Generally known as informal learning, it concentrates on how we develop and use skills rather than how we remember things taught in classrooms. When cheap computers came along in the eighties and nineties programmers and researchers tried to make interactive learning experiences or educational games. Almost without exception these brain training games were quickly discarded by the children because the researches forgot one important element, that games should be fun!

The first generation of brain training games to really worked were those designed and sold as games by the big game companies. With these, the learning was almost accidental as the makers were interested in making money and to do this they need the game to be fun and appealing. The fact that people learnt things was purely accidental.
Sim City was the first of these accidental learning games. Unlike just about every game before it, there is no way to win or lose in Sim City and within the limits of the game you are allowed to try anything. So different was Sim City that it took its designer, Wil Wright, four years to find a company willing to develop it. Once released though, it was a huge success. As hundreds of thousands of people learnt about urban planning whilst playing the game. They experimented with public transport, industrial zoning and crime management. Subjects most players of the game people had never given any thought to. In 2008, its groundbreaking role in brain training games meant that it is one of the pieces of software included in the One Laptop Per Child intuitive that is providing specially designed education laptops to the poorest children around the world.

As successful as SimCity and its spin-offs like The Sims and Railroad Tycoon, they were not true brain training games. They certainly stimulated the brain and players learnt thing but it was not designed to specifically improve the brain or body of the player.

Prior to SimCity was being developed games console make Atari was developing a system called Puffer, an exercise bike that links to the Atari home computers and consoles. This was the first mainstream attempt at Exergaming. The marriage of exercise and computer gaming. Atari went bankrupt before it was released and despite the occasional attempt by other companies to developer fitness products for gamers, there was no real progress until 1998 when Konami released the arcade game Dance Dance Revolution. Just like in the brain training games, the breakthrough came not from the experts but from a games company wanting to make something fun.

In Dance Dance Revolution the player has to step on a dance pad in the right place, in time with the music. On paper, it seems a daft idea, dancing as a computer game, but it was a huge hit and has spawned hundreds of sequels, spin offs and imitators. Almost immediately the health benefits of the game were seen with some regular players reporting losing up to 20kg and in one case of almost 40kg. The YMCA started to introduce these machines into its centres as a way of encouraging children to exercise and in 2006 the West Virginia school district started rolling the game out to all 765 state schools for use in physical fitness programme. Though the game is certainly healthy exercise and is focus of rhythm has lots of benefits for the brain, like Simcity its only an accidental brain training game.

Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training was the first deliberately targeted brain training game to be successful. It has spawned similar games both on and offline. The secret to the game is its use of mini-games that focus on specific mental abilities such as calculation or memory. These games are done everyday and the results are recorded. Players can look at graphs of their performance and compare it to those of friends. It also gives an estimated ‘brain age’ based on some simple tests with a younger brain age being better. This headline age, often shows an age many years older than the persons actual age but after a few days of playing it noticeably improves. This is probably down to the practice effect rather than any significant increase in brain power.

The impact of Kawashima’s game was in part due to a developing body of evidence that linked keeping an active brain with a longer and healthier life. Studies on nunneries found that those nuns who regular did crosswords, played scrabble or took place in other brain stimulating activities lived longer than those who did not. This has led to claims that brain training games can play an important part in delaying or preventing Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease however research has failed to prove this.

Despite only weak evidence that brain training games have a beneficial effect the genre is becoming increasing popular amongst game makers, hard core gamers and occasional gamers. Companies like Brain Arena offer free online brain games where as firms such as Lumosity and Mind Weavers sell games with a heavy emphasis on the science behind them. The area has also attracted its fair share of snake-oil salesmen making extravagant claims about their products and the repackaging of older, disproved ideas such as Sleep-learning as brain training games.

It is Nintendo who look to dominate the brain training game arena. Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training was one of the early titles in the Nintendo’s drive to sale products to families and people who are not hardcore gamers. With the Nintendo Wii and its unique control system, they have opened up a whole range of possibilities. Already research has shown how Wii Sports burns about twice as many calories as play a traditional console game but not enough for it to qualify as proper exercise. This will be fixed with the release of Wii Fit, a brain and body training system featuring a innovative digital balance board. As well as aerobic exercises, Wii Fit includes brain training though balance and rhythm based mini-games plus control and coordination training through yoga. The Wii Fit includes comprehensive tools for monitoring your weight and measuring your progress. Future releases include Wii Drums, a rhythm training game, to go alongside the already released Dance Factory and Dancing with the Stars rhythm and and games. Other games like Guitar Hero and Band Hero for the PS2, PS3 and X-Box that focus on rhythm skills have been hugely successful, selling over $1 billion worth.

The future looks bright for brain train games as makers work to find new ways to combine exercise, mental stimulation and above all, fun!

For information on how brain training games can help with ADHD, Autism and dyslexic, visit Myomancy.

Brain training is growing in popularity. Software such as the Dr Kawashima for the Nintendo DS have been a huge hit around the world. Often selling to people who would of never of thought of buying a games console. In Japan, Nintendos and Brain Training software have become popular gifts for grandparents. There is now online braining training so that you can give your brain a good work out while sitting at your desk. But does this work and can you brain train to happiness?

Happiness depends upon ourselves. - Aristotle

What is Brain Training?

Going to school is brain training, learning to drive a car is brain train, finding your way around a new city is brain training. Brain training is simply learning. However the difference between everyday learning and brain training is focus. In physical fitness training you can do general, all over exercises like jogging or swimming or you can target specific muscles using dumb-bells and weight machines. The brain works in exactly the same way. Reading a good book is a general work-out for the brain but doing a crossword puzzle targets specific skills.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. - Gandhi

What is Happiness?

This is a bigger question than many people think. We have all been happy and we all want to be happy but what is it? Firstly it is not a destination. You cannot do something and be guaranteed happiness for the rest of your life. If you get married you may think that now you’ve found a life partner you will be happy but will you be happy if your partner gets sick? No, or course not. Happiness is something that happens when things are going well. When you work is satisfying and your family is healthy. Happiness also comes from anticipation about the future. Your job may be very rewarding but if you knew you were going to do exactly the same job for thirty years would it still be rewarding? Knowing that what you do today will make life better in the future is a vital part of happiness.

Remember, happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have, it depends solely upon what you think. - Dale Carnegie

How Learning Makes You Happy

Humans like to learn. When we learn the brain releases powerful chemicals that bring pleasure as a reward. This is why scientists generally love their work because they are learning all the time. However at schools and colleges, children are not learning, they are being taught. The school is trying to force information into the brains of the children. Its like being force-fed the finest food in the world. It may be the best food created by the greatest chefs but if someone is holding you down and shoving it down your throat, you won’t enjoy it very much. So learning, when done by choice, can make you happy.

The chemical release that brings happiness from learning is short-term, a matter of minutes usually. Longer-term happiness comes from what learning enables you to do. The more you know the more you can achieve. You can get a better job that earns you more allowing you to move to a nicer area and take the family on holiday.

Learning, Brain Training and Happiness

Software like Dr Kawashima Brain Training focuses on specific skills such as short-term memory, quick calculations and rapid processing of information. These skills are the building blocks to learning. The better your short-term memory is, the more information you can absorb. Being able to think quickly and clearly means that you don’t get swamped when it gets busy. If you are swamped you become stressed and research has shown that stress prevents you from learning.

Brain Training will make you happy when you do it because each day you will learn something. Your brain will reward you for that learning with its powerful mix of chemicals. But more importantly, over the weeks and months of training you will become happier as your improved memory and processing skills will make life easier. Allowing you to spend more time on the things you enjoy. Ultimately you will find happiness because you have a goal, a dream of a better you, that you are striving to achieve.

Chris Tregenza writes about brain and body training on Myomancy. Focusing on educational problems such as dyslexia and ADHD he writes on how games such Wii Fit and Wii Drum can train the brain and body for better academic success.