This is the most biting Saturday Night Live sketch since the Chris Rock / Obama one of a year ago, and is rooted in some truths. But also it sends a message to Senator Clinton that she can't influnce the SNL comedians. It also shows how they feel about her. Like a good comedy work about politics should do, it's got some people upset. Of course, Clinton supporters, who are branded --- perhaps forever -- as racist. Let's see how the Clinton camp responds.

As I promised in my post yesterday about how much I love the EeePC now that XP is installed I wanted to digress for a little dork out session on how to do this.  It's not hard but does take some planning and a little work.  A lot of credit goes to this post which is where I got started. Prerequisites- A USB thumb drive, at least 1GB in size- SD Memory card, at least 16MB- Windows XP SP2 Installation CD- Physdiskwrite (download here)- Boot disk image (download here)- A second PC with a SD reader/USB to set the above up Creating the boot diskFirst we need to make our SD card bootable so we can get into DOS mode to start the XP installation.  To do this extract physdiskwrite.exe to a folder on your PC.  Place the wxpboot.ima file in this same folder and insert your SD card into your PC.  Drop to a command prompt, switch to that directory and type in: physdiskwrite -u wxpboot.ima WARNING: Make sure you choose the correct drive number when doing this (it was 1 for me) - if you choose the wrong one you will wipe your entire system, this would be bad so be very careful here.  This process should only take a few seconds. Copy XP to the USB Thumb driveNext you'll need to insert the USB thumb drive into your PC along with the XP SP2 CD.  Next copy the i386 directory from the XP CD to the root of your thumb drive. Beginning the installOnce you've got XP on your thumb drive insert it into the left side USB port on the EeePC (the side with only 1 USB port - this will make sure it shows up as D: later).  Put the SD card in the EeePC and power it on.  As it boots press F2 to get into the BIOS - you'll need to change "OS Installation" to "Start".  Press F10 to exit BIOS and reboot.  Now you should boot from the SD card and eventually come to a C: prompt. Next you'll need to repartition the EeePC using fdisk so at a command prompt type "fdisk" and press enter.  You'll need to go through and delete ALL partitions from the disk (ALL of them, including the non-DOS ones).  Once you've deleted them all you'll need to create one primary partition to fill the entire drive.  Now exit out of fdisk so we can format the drive by running "format c: /s" (the /s switch makes the disk bootable for us). Installing XPNow that you've got the drive all formatted you're ready to begin the XP install.  If you put the thumb drive in the correct port it will show up as your D: drive so all you need to do is switch to that drive, then cd to the i386 directory.  Once there type "winnt" to begin the install of XP.  On my machine I was using a very old USB card reader with a 2GB MiniSD card in it for the install.  The first part of install, up until the point at which it starts copying files to the system took about 15 minutes if I remember right.  The next part however took just a bit longer. Finishing the installSo how long did it take?  It took so long I was able to eat dinner, sleep, shower, go to work, eat, sleep, shower, go to work - then it was finally finished with the first phase of copying the install files to the system.  It took more than 48 hours to do this on my system!  I'm not exactly sure why but the good news is the next phases of install were crazy fast taking less than an hour if memory serves right.  Go through the install just like any other XP installation. DriversThe last thing you'll need when you are done are all the XP drivers.  Fortunately Asus is already providing them which I think is outstanding for a company that doesn't even ship XP on this box.  Hell I can't get drivers this easy for Alienware boxes and those come with Windows! So browse on over to Asus driver pages and download away.  The only thing I haven't been able to get to work are the function/volume keys, not really sure why. ConclusionI'm hoping that like me once you get XP on the EeePC it will become much more useful for you.  I don't mean to at all diminish the Linux stuff they put on it but for me that just wasn't a very useful platform.  I've been stunned with how well the EeePC runs XP, if the keyboard were slightly bigger I think I could use it as a my primary device at home (for times when I'm just doing quick type stuff). Well done Asus, well done.

A couple of weeks ago I visited the local deli near my workplace to pick up lunch. The shop always has a few different types of soup which are in large black pots in front of the salad bar. Each soup pot has a computer-created title paper taped onto it to let the customer know what deliciousness is on tap that day. On a recent visit, the available soups included "Grenn Spilt," which I can only imagine is in actuality Split Pea (it was sort of green). I was mad that I didn't bring my phone with me so I was unable to take a photo of the mystery soup label at that time. I thought I lost my chance until late last week when the screwy label appeared again. And again today. I am somewhat perplexed by this extremely poor choice of words. I can accept "Green Spilt" or "Spilt Pea," or even "Green Pee," but how did they come up with "Grenn Spilt"? I actually Googled "Grenn Spilt" to make sure it wasn't a foreign soup I hadn't come across until now (it wasn't). Apparently the computer wiz in charge of creating these labels doesn't use Microsoft Word, as the deli is also known for preparing the classic soups, "Chicken Nodle" and "Manhatan Clam Chowder" (ok, that one's not so bad unless you consider that it's the name of the borough the business is located in). So next time you're in the mood for a cup of mystery soup, go to Canal Street and West Broadway. You won't be disappointed.

I’m involved with a couple of companies in which two founders use a “co-CEO” title. This has forced me to do some thinking about whether or not this is inherently bad. One of these companies has been working with my friend and an experienced CEO who is named Tom. Tom challenged this company with two statements, [...]

Does being innovative result in "brand value" and therefore shareholder value? There's new data to suggest that the correlation exists.Millward Brown Optimor has released its third annual Brandz Top 100 Most Powerful Brands RankingThe Top 10 List (in contrast to BusinessWeek's 2008 ranking of World's Most Innovative) is as follows:Google (No.2)GE (No.4)Microsoft (No. 5)Coca-ColaChina MobileIBM (No.12)Apple (No.1)McDonald's (No.30)Nokia (No.10)MarlboroOf note is that Coca-Cola and China Mobile did not make the Most Innovative ranking but they're in the top 5 global brand value ranking. In the case of stalwart Coca-Cola, the surveys seem to indicate that the brand is strong but the company is not an innovator. It would appear , however, that with the newcomer China Mobile, brand value does not necessarily rely on being innovative (it didn't make BusinessWeek's regional list) when you can tap into the world's largest growth potential!As a contrast to BCG's approach to surveying executives for the World's Most Innovative and looking at historic shareholder value growth, Millward Brown Optimor quantifies and projects expectations of brand value using quantitative measures and consumer surveys:"The data for BrandZ is collected by interviewing consumers about brands from categories in which they shop on a regular basis. Respondents evaluate those brands competitively: they are asked to think about all the brands that they know within a category. The interviews deliver valuable insights because respondents who know a category are better suited to tell us what brand attributes matter to them most. These attributes are key measures of brand strength. BrandZ has interviewed over 1 million consumers who cumulatively compare 50,000 brands.""Brand value is the financial value of a brand defined as the sum of all earnings that a brand is expected to generate. For the purpose of the BrandZ Ranking, Millward Brown Optimor values brands in three steps. First, we establish a company’s intangible earnings and allocate them to individual brands and countries of operation, based on publicly available financial data from Bloomberg, Datamonitor (www.datamonitor.com) and our own research. Secondly, we determine the portion of intangible earnings attributable to brand alone, as opposed to other factors such as price. This metric, known as Brand Contribution, reflects the share of earnings from a product or service’s most loyal consumers or users. For this second step, we use research-based loyalty data from the BrandZ database. Finally, we project the brand value forward based on market valuations, the brand’s risk profile, and its growth potential."Finally, the 2008 BrandZ press release provides the following takeaways:Established vs Emerging Asia. Chinese brands continue to get stronger.BRIC's (Brazil, Russia, India, China) continue to help drive international growth.The Technology sector boom. Technology led this year's brand value growth of $187.5bn. This is more than half of the Top 100’s total increase.The net of this new data and methodology (see details in 2008 Report) is a calculation is that has 3 key factors:Brand Value = Intangible Earnings x Brand Contribution x Brand MultipleWith globalization and the rapid growth of China, it will be fascinating to see how these rankings evolve over time! Comparing the two reports mentioned in this post, there does appear to be a significant connection between innovation and brand value. In future posts I intend to dissect the equation, further unpacking how the BrandZ report makes key assumptions in predicting the future. Let's not forget, however, Michael Raynor's recent strategic research and bestseller, The Strategy Paradox, that concluded you can't predict the future!

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