Louis Vuitton Monogram Luxury Items – What a Fashion Icon!

Although the brand has never NOT been popular, Marc Jacobs, artistic director of Louis Vuitton has hit a homerun with the monogram designs. They have an almost cult following amongst celebrities. Never has one handbag brand been so coveted in all of fashion history. An icon has been born.

A Louis Vuitton monogram canvas travel item can set you back anything between $595 and $14,000. These bags are regular features on celebs like Scarlet Johansson, Uma Thurman, Kate Moss, Beyoncé, Naomi Campbell and the Hilton sisters.

And how these handbags command respect! Walk into any department store with a Louis Vuitton bag and you give out signals to the store clerks and owners of “Discerning shopper: Handle as a VIP”

The monogram is used for any travel item; from wallets, to golf bags, large trunks to overnight luggage. At a price, Louis Vuitton will even customise any travel item for you. One thing they won’t do however is compromise their brand, as one rap artist found out. He wanted to customise his SUV with monogram canvass seat covers. Louis Vuitton had no problem saying no, despite him offering vast amounts of money to change their minds.

This 150 year old brand has never been so popular amongst the elite of the world.

Below is a pic of Jessica Simpson walking down the street, clutching her Louis Vuitton.

Surface Computers - Microsoft designed the next evolutionary step in computing

I have close to 14 blog articles which I have done the research for, but never actually took the time to write and publish them. But every now and again a story comes along that fascinates me so much, that I have to publish it immediately. This is such a story.

Microsoft is once again changing the face of computing: The latest evolutionary leap in computing. Ever watched the movie The Island with Scarlet Johansson and Ewan McGregor? In the movie the character that plays the director of the facility uses a “surface” / table computer. His desk becomes the computer, with “files” (computer files) scattered across the table. Just by touching the table and moving his fingers on it, he manipulates the files, type and operates the commands.

Well, Microsoft is making this all a reality. Click here to watch the video clip of a demonstration of the product.

This is really fascinating! I can see that these tabletop/ “surface” computers will soon replace our standard desktop PC’s. Pretty soon, your computer will be bought in a computer retailer and also available in furniture shops! Bill Gates will once again become the richest man in the world. Rumour has it that Carlos Slim Helu now holds this position. I will report on this shortly...

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Futuristic features of Luxury cars – Audi, Mercedes-Benz and Lexus

I’m back. I’ve just finished moving into my new place. Stepping up. I’ve forgotten what a big task it is to move. It’s just not simply picking up your stuff, loading it up and moving. No, it’s a whole three weeks of small, time consuming small labour: Move this, fix that, buy this, install that. Admin, measuring and fitting, looking at options, schedules and unexpected expenses. But in the end, it’s all worth it.

So I have the privilege of living in a better neighbourhood now. My favourite thing about it is the neighbours’ cars! Expensive cars. I love seeing what they are driving. Looking… that’s all I can do right now, since all my money is going into my business and my new, huge mortgage.

To protect the privacy of my one neighbour, let’s call him Andrew. Andrew drives a 2007 Lexus LS460. I’ve personally never been a big fan of Lexus, till I had a chat with Andrew. The features of this car are astounding!

And that is where I’m heading with this article: The astounding, mind-boggling technological marvels that the car manufacturers are building into their cars today. Audi, Mercedes-Benz and Lexus are leading the feature race. Just have a look at these innovative features that are in cars already and those soon to be launched:

Audi

Audi have manufactured the world’s fastest, smoothest, commercially available gearbox: The S-Tronic. It consists of 2x 3 speed gearboxes and 2 clutches. When you take off, transmission one is in first gear and transmission two is in second. When it’s time to change gears, S-Tronic uses the clutches to swap transmissions and gear changes happen in an unprecedented eight milliseconds! There is just no way you’ll be able to feel the gear changing, never mind loosing power during gear shifts!

Mercedes-Benz

Car-to-car Comm: This feature baffles me a bit. It sounds like the first sign that cars will be driving themselves in the near future. The future generation of Mercs will all be connected through a multi-car network: Their own little Intranet. This apparently opens up several possibilities. For example: Your new E-Class will receive a message from a SLK further down the highway that the traffic is backed up and will warn you to consider an alternative route. Wow. The cars are talking to one another! The next thing you know, they will not be doing their job, because they are IM’ing love letters to one another! This feature is reported to be launched in 2009.

Lexus

Lexus has gone out of their way to pack their flagship model, the LS460 with the coolest features on the market. They are well working towards taking human error out of driving.

Advanced Obstacle detection and Driver Monitoring: Note… “driver monitoring”. They do not only manage the car; they manage you. All the new luxury cars have sensors on the front and the back, detecting the distance between you and the car in front of you. Now Lexus’ and Mercedes-Benz’s will actually assist in braking the car if you don’t do so early enough. But the Lexus will actually detect where you are looking at! If you are distracted by the sexy billboard of Scarlett Johansson next to the road, the Lexus will detect that you are not focusing on the traffic and the car will raise an alarm and start braking for you to prevent a collision.

Advanced Parking Guidance System (APGS): This upcoming feature to the Lexus LS460 is for all the people, like me, who hate to parallel park. Never again will it be a problem in the LS460. With this feature, all you have to do is align your Lexus next to the open space, press a button on the dashboard and watch the car park itself! Wow. Amazing, right? The car will detect the space you want to park in and actually manoeuvre itself into that space!

If you are still not convinced that cars will start to drive itself in a short while, I just don’t know. Just look at the evidence: We’ve got cars parking itself, braking itself, cars talking to one another and changing gears without you feeling it. Pretty soon we will be spectators to cars driving themselves!

Not me however. This move will keep me financially unstable for a while, while I still drive my 2003 medium sedan. I won’t be buying a new car anytime soon. That’s unless Prince Azim actually reads my blog and decide to change my fate!

Prince Azim of Brunei – When money is no object

Prince Azim of Brunei, 25 year old billionaire playboy spared no expense on his 25th birthday bash. His 200 strong guest list included current stars and those of yesteryear. Celebrities that attended included Jerry Hall, Olivia Newton-John, Faye Dunaway, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss and even Pamela Anderson. But the star of the night was Prince Azim’s all time hero, Michael Jackson. The former star was paid $10 million to attend, and not even perform!

Every guest got goodie bags that included iPods, Bose Electronic goods, diamond jewelry and Crème de la Mer face creams that reportedly were worth thousands of dollars.

What a life you could lead if money was not an option! Prince Azim is the son of the Sultan of Brunei and known as the ultimate billionaire playboy; always with a beautiful celebrity on his side. Former dates included beauties like Naomi Campbell (Pictured with him), Mischa Barton and Scarlet Johannson.

He has never been shy to spend on celebrities as I reported in one of my previous posts. Mariah Carey got a $5.4 million necklace and to impress rap star Usher, he reportedly sent him a truck load of goodies that included designer track suits, sneakers, loads of Bling and electronic good worth hundreds of thousand dollars.

To say the least, Prince Azim is living the charmed life.

“Your royal highness, if you are reading this, I have my eye on this little… I promise it won’t cost too much… “ :)