Gospel singer BeBe Winans shares a great story at Whitney Houston’s funeral.

The Whole Memorial:

LIVE: Coldplay

PART ONE

60 Minutes‘s interview with Walter Isaacson, the authorized biographer of Apple founder and former CEO Steve Jobs, aired on CBS News. The above and below segments appeared two-and-a-half weeks after Jobs’s passing, and less than 24 hours before Isaacson’s biography hits bookshelves. It’s out Monday 24th, 2011 and we’ve ordered six copies from Amazon.

You may order your copy HERE.

PART TWO

Watch billionaire Richard Branson charm journalists and celebrities as he publicizes new routes for Virgin America.

Most of us would consider a successful barbecue to be one where the sausages weren’t burnt to a crisp and it didn’t pour with rain, although in sunny LA, people have higher expectations.

Model and actress Alice Greczyn, 25, was elated when she turned up at a Malibu beach party and left as the new face of Victoria Beckham’s denim and eyewear collection.

Mrs Beckham had been struggling to find a girl to model the look book for her spring/summer 2011 line when she spotted Miss Greczyn lounging on the deck of the beach house in a bikini.

The mother-of-three approached the actress – who has appeared in Road Trip and Dukes of Hazzard – saying ‘I love your freckles’ before asking her if she had tried modelling and ushering her husband David over to take some pictures.

In an interview with Grazia, Miss Greczyn revealed how the former Spice Girl made her footballer husband David take her picture.

The extremely successful British entrepreneur shares advice on staying inspired while executing on new ideas.

Q: How do you maintain your motivation to generate new ideas and execute them?

A: My motivations have changed a lot over the past 40 years. In retrospect, it’s clear this has been a long-term process, and I acquired new motivations over time.

I am not sure anyone could have predicted my career arc, except perhaps my parents. I was not a promising student, probably because of undiagnosed dyslexia. But my parents did not see my trouble learning as a limitation. Rather, they helped me find my strengths by teaching me to constantly look for new challenges. Achievements in sports and early business ventures such as a Christmas tree farm taught me to be inquisitive, and rely on persistence and creativity when problems came up.

I was partly driven by a desire to prove myself when I started Student magazine at 16. My friends and I wanted to give our generation a voice in the issues of the day, especially the Vietnam War.

We started the magazine because of our convictions, and we loved it. It didn’t matter that we were working out of a basement in West London, with no financial backing. We just threw everything we had into the venture and secured advertisers and interviews. It was hard work, but also fun and exciting and, above all, a project we felt strongly about.

That sense of fun, enjoyment and purpose underpinned our expansion to selling records and then establishing record stores. Our next move, into the recording business, was no different. My love of music and concern for people behind that music ensured I was never short of motivation — just sometimes short of cash!

The U.K.’s recession of the late 1970s coincided with a slowdown in our record sales and a lack of hits. We had created a close community at Virgin, and I wanted the people I worked with to enjoy their jobs. I was also deeply concerned about job security. We were running at a loss, and I had to decide whether to consolidate our stores and rein back the recording business, or follow my instincts and invest in new artists.

Hoping to expand our way out of financial problems, I bought two nightclubs and invested more money in our record business. Its managing director, Simon Draper, was a great talent, so I backed him to create the U.K.’s largest independent label.

Our resulting success in the music business saved the day. The strength of the brand meant that we looked beyond music for business opportunities, and my motivations broadened again. With our old and new businesses, we were developing a community of customers, so my goals now included Virgin’s becoming one of the world’s most respected brands.

The different motivations meant setting up businesses Virgin employees were passionate about, trying to shake up markets and win the trust of potential customers. We often succeeded as we targeted leading companies in sectors where we felt the customer was no longer well served. In quick succession we moved into airlines, trains, drinks, financial services, health clubs and hotels.

Over the past decade, my motivation has broadened to large-scale philanthropic endeavors. This led to the creation of Virgin Unite, which was instrumental in establishing The Elders, the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship and the Carbon War Room — all exciting tools in the fight against poverty, illness and catastrophic climate change.

I am constantly challenging my team with new ideas, innovations or ventures I would like set up — in double-quick time. My original inquisitiveness and desire to seek out new challenges also can be seen in our Virgin Galactic space adventure. Following the inauguration of the Spaceport runway in New Mexico in October, my dream of space tourism is getting closer. A big project for 2011 will be getting our underwater exploration business up and running. Drawing on the late Steve Fossett’s work, we are keen to chart the deep-sea trenches.

You may wonder if such adventures are appropriate for a man my age — 60 — which brings me to my last motivational rule: “Screw it, let’s do it!”

Did we miss it then?

The people at Smart Water decided to test that philosophy by creating a video in which pitchwoman Jennifer Aniston attempts to make a viral video. Surprisingly, her efforts paid off. At least according to the Search box. Over the past 24 hours, online interest in “aniston smart water” and “aniston viral video” have more than tripled.

The video, which is tongue-in-cheek referred to as the “Jen Aniston sex tape,” features Aniston spoofing several well-known viral videos from times past, including the dancing babies, the double rainbow guy, and you can’t go wrong with lots of cute little puppies.

It’s been over two years since an album sold more than a million units in its first week and the news this week is that Taylor Swift’s new album Speak Now is poised to be the first since Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III came out in June of 2008. Final numbers are not available yet, although Billboard suggests that the album could have the biggest debut since 50 Cent’s Massacre sold 1,141,000 in March 2005.

Attempting to keep the focus on her album on a recent Ellen show, Swift said, “It took two years to make this album, and at some point in the process, I made the conscious decision to write it by myself,” she said. “With this album, it’s been such an emotional process. I’d have nightmares in the middle of the night that Rolling Stone hated it. I was really nervous about it, because taking this on, you’re taking a lot of ownership of whether people like it or don’t.”

No. 1: Enjoy What You Are Doing.
Because starting a business is a huge amount of hard work, requiring a great deal of time, you had better enjoy it. I set out to create something I enjoyed that would pay the bills. There was no great plan or strategy. The name itself was thought up on the hoof. One night some friends and I were chatting over a few drinks and decided to call our group Virgin, as we were all new to business. For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that’s going to make a real difference to other people’s lives.

A businesswoman or a businessman is not unlike an artist. What you have when you start a company is a blank canvas; you have to fill it. Just as a good artist has to get every single detail right on that canvas, a businessman or businesswoman has to get every single little thing right when first setting up in business in order to succeed. However, unlike a work of art, the business is never finished. It constantly evolves.

If a businessperson sets out to make a real difference to other people’s lives, and achieves that, he or she will be able to pay the bills and have a successful business to boot.

No. 2: Create Something That Stands Out.
Whether you have a product, a service or a brand, it is not easy to start a company and to survive and thrive in the modern world. In fact, you’ve got to do something radically different to make a mark today.

Look at the most successful businesses of the past 20 years. Microsoft, Google or Apple, for example, shook up a sector by doing something that hadn’t ever been done and by continually innovating. They are now among the dominant forces.

No. 3: Create Something That Everybody Who Works for You is Really Proud of.
Businesses generally consist of a group of people, and they are your biggest assets.

No. 4: Be a Good Leader.
As a leader you have to be a really good listener. No one has a monopoly on good ideas or good advice. Get out there, listen to people, draw people out and learn from them. As a leader you’ve also got to be extremely good at praising people. Never openly criticize people; never lose your temper, and always lavish praise on your colleagues for a job well done. People flourish if they’re praised. Usually they don’t need to be told when they’ve done wrong because most of the time they know it. So see if there’s another job within the company that suits them better. On most occasions you’ll find something for every single kind of personality.

No. 5: Be Visible.
A good leader does not get stuck behind a desk. I get out and about, meeting people. I always have a notebook in my back pocket to jot down questions, concerns or good ideas. I try to make sure that we appoint managing directors who have the same philosophy. When you’re building a business from scratch, the key word for many years is “survival.” It’s tough to survive. Literally, your full concentration has to be on surviving. Obviously, if you don’t survive, just remember that most businesses fail and the best lessons are usually learned from failure. You must not get too dispirited. Just get back up and try again.

24/7 Wall St. compiles a report of brands that are likely to disappear in the near-term.  To qualify, it’s expected that the brand will be gone by the end of 2011, or for its parent to be sold or go into Chapter 11.

Blockbuster: was the national leader in the video rental business for nearly two decades. Now it is contemplating Chapter 11 to eliminate debt. The company lost $65 million last quarter. Its revenue continues to fall rapidly as firms such as Redbox and NetFlix. Blockbuster rival Movie Gallery said in February that it would close all of its 2,400 U.S. stores. Blockbuster’s model of renting movies through physical locations has been destroyed by cable and satellite video on demand, DVDs via mail and dispensing machines. Blockbuster may still be around as a company that has movie kiosks and a small mail and Internet-delivered content business. But its brick and-mortar business is dead.

Dollar Thrifty: the car rental company, is for sale. Hertz is a potential buyer, as is Avis Budget. The number of vehicles that Dollar Thrifty operates at any one time is only 95,000 compared to 420,000 for Hertz. The firm’s customer base and some of its locations may be valuable, but Dollar Thrifty can’t compete with Avis and Hertz. A significant drop in business and leisure travel and sharp competition among the companies has already caused the creation of Avis Budget. Dollar Thrifty will be the next casualty of the industry’s consolidation.

BP Plc: The case against the BP brand is not so much that the company will enter bankruptcy. It is that BP may end up breaking into pieces for its own sake. This may be to put the liabilities for the Deepwater Horizon spill into a company that also holds escrow capital to cover the huge costs of clean-up and suits. BP may also want to separate its successful refining operations from its exploration business, or recreate an American- based company similar to BP America, which existed for two decades. A restructuring of BP would also allow the firm to take a badly crippled brand and give the oil operation a new name — much as it did when it changed its name from British Petroleum.

Kia Motors: is one of the two car brands of Hyundai of South Korea. It has always been a marginal brand. Its stable mate, Hyundai USA, has a reputation for high quality cars like the Sonata and Genesis. Kia sells “low rent” cars and SUV nameplates like the Sorento and Rio. The parent company will take a page from several other global car companies and dump its weakest brand.

Merrill Lynch: may have been acquired, but that will not keep it safe. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Banks and other large financial services firms have a habit of buying large retail brokerage houses and then changing their names. Shearson is gone. So is EF Hutton and Prudential. In the U.S. Merrill is now owned by Bank of America Corp. and the buyout spawned a number of scandals that kept Merrill’s name in the paper for weeks and did a great deal to harm its name with customers. Bank of America will follow a time honored tradition, and Merrill Lynch will become BofA Investment Management.

Moody’s: is more than 100 years old, but the reputation it built over those years is irretrievably lost. There is a chance Moody’s could be ruined by civil actions, four of which are pending, and by charges brought by the U.S. government. Overseas authorities may bring a number of actions against the company as well. Pacific Investment Management Co. and other institutional investors have talked about taking on some if not all the roles that the current rating firms play. Research houses like Alliance Bernstein could also take on some of those rolls. Part of Moody’s operation may stay alive, but there is not much left to salvage in the brand.

RadioShack: is one of the oldest retailers in the U.S. It was founded in 1921 and in the early 1960s was purchased by Tandy Corp. The Tandy name was used for some of Radio Shack’s retail stores. RadioShack is currently a takeover target. There have been rumors that the company may be taken private via a leveraged buyout or purchased by Best Buy, probably for its locations. Best Buy would certainly not keep the RadioShack brand because it is considered downscale and does not have the reputation for quality products and service that Best Buy enjoys. RadioShack has already begun to rebrand itself as “The Shack,” an indication that it knows the older brand is a burden.

Readers Digest: was once the most widely read magazine in the world. Last August, the company took its U.S. operations into Chapter 11 to decrease debt. It emerged from bankruptcy in February with $525 million in exit financing. Reader’s Digest as it is known in the U.S. will be gone.

T-Mobile: A merger with Sprint-Nextel has been mentioned several times. The combined company would have a customer base about the same size as AT&T or Verizon. And the transaction would probably make Deutsche Telekom a large owner of the combined operation. Another alternative would be a merger with Virgin Mobile. Maybe Deutsche Telekom will just change the firm’s name.

Zale: was founded in 1924 by the Zale brothers. It was one of the earliest retailers to offer the ability to buy items on credit. By 1980, Zale had revenue of over $1 billion. In 1992, Zale filed for bankruptcy and by the end of that decade, its revenue was $1.3 billion, about the same as it is today. Zale has been at death’s door for some time. Its market value is down to $48 million. Zale is also in a very crowded market that includes retailers as large as Wal-Mart. Golden Gate Capital recently put money into Zale to buy it time. New money may defer the point at which Zale goes under, but it won’t prevent it.

It’s been one year since the King of Pop’s untimely death.