Muchos gracias everyone who chipped in during our Consumerist $10 for $10,000 donation drive. We only got to $6,318.17, but hey, for a recession, that’s still pretty great. You can donate at any time throughout the year, just hit the “donate” button at the top of the page, or visit Donatetoconsumerist.com (FAQ). Thanks again! Now back to your regularly scheduled programming, already in progress.
TX or DC area pref., FPL Group
FPL Energy Services, Inc., a growing Energy Service Company with two federal contracts, and a subsidiary of FPL Group – the US leader in energy from wind and solar systems.
The Federal Sales Executive will have the following responsibilities: Develop and execute strategic and tactical sales plans to drive profitable revenue growth while meeting operating targets for Federal performance contracting sales. Collaborate with marketing, operations, legal, finance, and other key stakeholders to improve customer acquisition, service, and retention. Develop Federal segment account management plans and build and expand customer relationships to maximize long term account growth. Monitor the market and territory and proactively prospect to develop new business opportunities and a strong pipeline. Understand new technologies and products/services and sell a full portfolio of FPLES ESCO (Energy Services Company) solutions. Maintain an accurate and updated opportunity pipeline, and provide accurate forecasting information by utilizing CRM system. Consistently execute the Performance Contracting sales process, and fully apply consultative sales methodologies and techniques to drive competitive differentiation and deal closure. Monitor external environment, competitive trends, and Voice of the Customer info to communicate to marketing about new product/services. Lead and develop RFP response drawing from technical writers, engineering, construction, purchasing, business development and management ensuring that the voice of the customer and requirements are incorporated and having primary accountability for accuracy and delivery of the response. Ensure proper controls and compliance in accordance with corporate policy and procedures. Needs experience in negotiating ESCO sales with the federal government. This position requires extensive travel. Flexible on position location.
*Bachelors degree in engineering, business or a similar field. MBA preferred
*Minimum of six years of related commercial or governmental work experience, or an equivalent combination of education and work experience.
*Technical and financial expertise to effectively and independently qualify and sell energy solutions and service product lines.
*Related professional certifications preferred (e.g. CEM, LEED AP, etc.).
*A proven relationship-builder with C-level executives.
*Technical consultative sales.
*Practical knowledge of state and federal energy regulations.
*Strong interpersonal and negotiation skills, ability to liaise with colleagues and customers at all levels.
*Proven history of develop/deliver presentations
*Proficiency with MS Office Suite
Although they’ve been working together since 2004, the CEO’s of Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) held a press conference in Times Square to announce the details of a new level for their relationship. The news, which leaked last week, has Yahoo providing Nokia devices with e-mail, search and services. In outlining the new aspects of the Yahoo/Nokia alliance, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz placed particular emphasis on Nokia’s mobile mapping technology. “Yahoo lost its focus on maps a few years ago—well, not lost it, just invested in other areas, Bartz said. “By partnering with Nokia to build that up, we can still focus on other parts of the business, such as search.” She also noted that is this part of a larger plan for Yahoo to expand its existing partnerships with roughly 100 mobile companies around the world. Nokia will also help it drive growth in other markets including India and Thailand.
Specifically, Nokia will be the exclusive, global provider of Yahoo’s maps and navigation services, integrating Nokia’s Ovi Maps across the internet company’s offerings. In return, Yahoo’s job involves becoming the exclusive, global provider of Nokia’s Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services, which will be branded as “Ovi Mail/Ovi Chat powered by Yahoo!”
The partnership with Nokia will not mean that Yahoo will forget about its iPhone, Blackberry and coming Android apps. For Nokia’s part, CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo feels that Yahoo will help it gain greater market share in the U.S. Yahoo said co-branded services will begin to become available starting in the second half of this year and with global availability expected in 2011.
One area that the two will not collaborate on is advertising. Bartz and Kallasvuo both said that this is strictly about consumer services. “There is no advertising relationship in this partnership,” Bartz said, though she added that at least in directly, their work on location services will help both to better tap local marketers, an area that is increasingly important to Yahoo.
In conversation with Jason Titus, Yahoo’s VP for communications services, and Tero Ojanperä, Nokia’s EVP, services, the two discussed how adding advertising services to the arrangement was unnecessary. Essentially, if the geo-services and social media aspects of the deal work as intended, the ad dollars will flow to both companies respectively, they said. “We’re both moving aggressively in mobile advertising, and bringing the huge reach that Yahoo and Nokia have in combination, we’ll both become much more relevant to local advertisers,” Titus told paidContent.
Asked whether there was a temptation to challenge Apple’s iAd mobile ad system for apps, Titus responded, “Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is doing a lot of interesting things, but I don’t think that anyone should regard iAd as the be all, end all of mobile advertising. The mobile space is still just burgeoning, it’s still experimental. We’ve been doing digital advertising a long time and there’s going to be a lot of different experiences for mobile ads going forward.”
Nokia’s Ojanperä said that the company will continue to use a number of advertising partners in various global markets. “What works in the U.S. is different than what works in China, so it makes sense for us to continue our existing relationships,” he said.
There is one area of advertising that will see some teamwork from Yahoo and Nokia. When the unified services rollout during the second half of the year, there will be an extension of Yahoo’s ongoing branding campaign and Nokia’s promotion of its own new devices. “There will not be a dedicated device related to the Yahoo partnership,” Ojanperä said. “But we do have many exciting devices coming out, including the new N8 [smartphone], and we will advertise around those product launches.”
In making today’s big announcement, Nokia and Yahoo needed to address the judgment that they were both being left behind by Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Apple and even, to some extent, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), as all have their own mobile operating systems. The launch of these new services aren’t really about any new innovations in the space, but it certainly does help in getting both companies caught up. It may seem a little late to industry observers, but as Yahoo Titus noted, the mobile space is still pretty new for most consumers.
Related
Yahoo and Nokia have unveiled a partnership that will see Yahoo power Nokia’s Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat platforms and Nokia provide mapping services for all of Yahoo’s navigation products. But the deal is a late effort by two companies being leap-frogged by newer, nimble competitors in the mobile space.
Or as my friend Michael Gartenberg, who tweeted just after the announcement, put it: “Yahoo and Nokia deal feels like two brands that have lost relevance seeking to reclaim it.” Indeed, this deal would have held far more promise had it been inked as little as two or three years ago. But at this point, swapping services won’t be enough to slow down the mobile juggernauts of Apple and Google, both of which already provide rich ecosystems and services.
Some numbers to help put this last-ditch alliance in scope:
Yahoo, which hasn’t focused on its Maps platform for years — CEO Carol Bartz admitted as much during the webcast detailing the Nokia deal — gains the navigation expertise offered by Nokia both in Ovi Maps and in Nokia’s Navteq assets, which Nokia purchased in 2007 for $8 billion. And given Nokia’s focus on emerging markets, this alliance brings the Yahoo brand to new places around the world — locations poised for growth, so there could be some short-term, marginal benefit.
Ironically, Nokia’s Ovi brand will gain recognition as well, but not in emerging markets. Instead, Nokia’s Ovi name will be seen in the United States each and every time someone uses Yahoo Maps, which will be tagged: “Powered by Ovi.” Although Nokia is the undisputed worldwide champion when it comes to handsets, it wants a foothold in the U.S. to offset lost market share. Nokia President and CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo called the deal a step toward helping the company “compete in the world’s largest market.” It is a step, but not much of one and not one that the company should have waited until 2010 to take.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
Mobile OSes Are No Longer Just About Mobile
I woke up to find it raining on the west side of the house, and snowing on the east. Globally it may be warm, but not here in Bozeman.
The NAR reports: Existing-Home Sales Rise
Existing-home sales, which are completed transactions that include single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, increased 7.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.77 million units in April from an upwardly revised 5.36 million in March, and are 22.8 percent higher than the 4.70 million-unit pace in April 2009…
Total housing inventory at the end of April rose 11.5 percent to 4.04 million existing homes available for sale, which represents an 8.4-month supply at the current sales pace, up from an 8.1-month supply in March.
Keep reading at Calculated Risk >
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It looks like Kindle firmware 2.5 is trickling out to certain Kindle DX owners right this very second. This ought to mean that the update will hit a Kindle near you rather shortly.
You’ll recall that this update brings Facebook and Twitter applications to the e-reader. Can’t imagine either being too useful beyond the initial “hey let’s check this out” honeymoon, but here we are.
Yup, that’s it. Quick little story, this.
Google’s advertising programs have been highly successful for the company and helped it become the giant it is today, a little over a decade after it launched. The biggest share of its ad revenue comes from its search engine, but a significant part also comes from the ads it serves on third-party sites. The AdSense program has been doing gr… (read more)
Earlier this year, I recommended the book No Law by David L. Lange & H. Jefferson Powell. I still keep meaning to get around to writing a full review, but the book makes a very compelling argument that copyright law is a clear violation of First Amendment principles. However, rather than wiping out copyright law, the book suggests something of an alternative. In noting that the claim of “exclusive rights” has been bastardized from the original “exclusive rights to profits,” they suggest that no one be barred from using the content of others, with the requirement that profits due to those uses must then be shared with the originator. I have some issues with that conclusion, but it looks like others are investigating that concept as well.
Andrew F alerts us to the latest work by Marshall van Alstyne, who we’ve mentioned before concerning his views on journalism business models and who did a great job at The Free Summit put on by Tech Policy Central, and emceed by me. His most recent paper, co-authored with Gavin Clarkson, explores both how strict intellectual property rights lead to socially inefficient outcomes, and how “fairness” principles could be much more efficient. The paper uses a combination of real world examples, previous research and game theory to make a rather compelling case.
Basically, it explains all the reasons why intellectual property leads to hoarding of information that slows innovation:
Property rights provide incentives to create information but they also provide incentives to hoard it prior to the award of protection. All-or-nothing rights, in
particular, limit prior sharing. An unintended consequence is to slow, not has-
ten, forward progress when innovation hinges on combining disparately owned
private ideas.
As to why this happens, it’s due to the injunctive ability of intellectual property holders to not just stop the specific use of their expression or invention, but effectively everything else built on top of it:
Infringement of copyright provides injunctive relief as remedy. This permits copyright
owners the use of take-it-or-leave-it offers as strategy. The trouble that results from such
a hold-up strategy is that it allows the injunctive rights owner, when bargaining with a
non-owner, to extract nearly the full value of any transaction (with full information it is
full value.) For recombinant works, this affords the last negotiating rights holder undue
influence much as the last negotiating landowner exercises undue bargaining power relative
to other landowners in any effort to develop a multi-parcel tract of indistinguishable parcels
of land. For works of modest value, such as a single sample of a song, image, or video,
negotiation costs can vastly exceed market value. For transformative works, insignificant
inclusions of lesser material can retard or reduce the progress of more valuable material as
when the release of the movie 12 Monkeys was enjoined due to the appearance in several
scenes of a copyrighted chair.
From there, they make the case models that follow on “fairness” and “liability” work much better than a strict “property rights” setup. Along the way, they discuss the study we mentioned in the past about how people view fairness and relative compensation, as well as debunk the myth that if one person can take advantage of another they absolutely will.
The end result is a suggestion not unlike the one in No Law: that rather than setting up a system of artificial property-like rights called copyright and patents, there may be more social and economic efficiency in allowing unfettered usage of expression and inventions, with a system that then requires some sort of attribution and payment for a fair share of any of the profits. That would then actually encourage much greater sharing of ideas and inventions in an effort to get those concepts included more widely.
It’s definitely interesting to think about, and I agree that in many ways it would likely lead to great net benefit than an IP regime, but it could also generate many other problems, especially in situations of independent generation or incidental copying — as well as long, and drawn out legal fights over these situations as well as a determination of what is, in fact, fair. The paper does try to address the latter point with three responses, but I’m sure this won’t be enough for some.
Either way, this is certainly an interesting paper that contributes to this ongoing discussion.
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Contributor Beth Comstock is the Chief Marketing Officer at GE.
Innovation, R&D, and game-changing tech. When combined with the right market intelligence, investment horsepower, and willingness to break the rules, they can lead companies to not just weather a recession, but roar out of it. At GE, we’re betting big on the power of breakthrough technologies to do just that — and a living, breathing example of that thinking in action can be seen in our new healthymagination business initiative, which today issued its first annual report.
 Beth Comstock |
Since launching healthymagination in May 2009, we’ve reached our year-one goals with $700 million in R&D investments, $250 million in capital investments and the launch of 24 new products and technologies. But beyond charting the progress made in such a short time, the report hammers home the idea that innovation isn’t simply about generating more ideas. Rather, technologies must be marshaled toward specific business goals; attack real societal problems; and be wedded to a deep understanding of customer needs.
Because innovators and companies are often stuck in their current successes or current business models, there’s a critical need to generate new thinking. In the military, they call it “rearview mirroring” — which is when plans to fight the next war are made by looking back at the last war. Just as that kind of trap can prove disastrous for a country, it can also cripple a business long-term.
 Vital signs: The Annual Report also spotlights the investments GE is making in areas including our own employees’ health; partnerships with companies such as Intel, Mayo Clinic, Eli Lilly and Intermountain Health Care; healthcare IT solutions; new products that meet local needs at affordable price points; and investments to bring better health solutions to remote and underserved communities. |
To tackle this challenge head-on in our healthymagination initiative, GE started by looking at our innovation strategy in three ways. First, we wanted to innovate by mining our existing product lines for technologies that meet our healthymagination goals of reducing healthcare costs while simultaneously increasing access for more people and increasing quality. At the same time, we wanted to do what we call “moving into adjacent healthcare spaces” — which is all about freeing ourselves of old thinking and taking the great technology we have today and finding new, related markets or applications. For example, one area we are pursuing is to take our healthcare imaging technologies into digital pathology.
Concurrently, we also stepped on the gas to develop game-changing technologies that will be in demand in the near future. One example can be seen on our launch of Vscan, an ultra-smart, ultra-small, ultrasound. Another example can be seen in what we call “Reverse Innovation,” which is our approach to developing technologies in emerging markets, for emerging markets — and then finding new outlets for these less expensive, often-miniaturized technologies in developed economies. For example, our lightweight, inexpensive Mac 800 electrocardiogram was born from the mobile unit created in India and China for those countries’ rural needs.
We made the decision to develop and fast-track these new products, and the others that are now part of healthymagination, by focusing on the right kind of market intelligence and insights — and by keeping our global research and technology developments tied to our marketing and sales teams. It’s why healthymagination is about bringing better healthcare to more people and at the same time, a core business strategy at GE designed to generate revenue and position us for long-term growth.
 Healthymagination is a $6 billion commitment over six years. The commitment is to invest $3 billion in R&D, $2 billion in financing and $1 billion in technology and content, launching at least 100 innovations that lower cost, increase access and improve quality by 15 percent. |
* Read the full Healthymagination Annual Report
* Read today’s announcement
* Learn more about Vscan
* Read more healthymagination stories on GE Reports
* Read “Reverse Innovation hits Harvard’s most influential list” on GE Reports
* Read “Reverse innovation: Building GE’s local growth model” on GE Reports
A while back I started to wonder what if anything will come of the Round One unfunded ARRA applications. So I contacted everyone who had an unfunded project in Minnesota. My survey was hardly scientific or stringent but I thought it might be interesting to report in.
I found 93 unfunded projects. Of those, 27 were projects that centered only or primarily in Minnesota, a few covered a couple of states and the rest were primarily national projects. I heard back from almost a third of the folks I contacted. I asked just four question encouraging people to say as much or as little as they wanted:
Here’s what I heard or found out:
Was your application for an existing plan or project or did the ARRA funding spur you to create a plan?
About a third of the folks who got back to me indicated that their projects would have been used to significantly expand or extend an existing project. For many people that expansion meant going into new areas. For a few folks it meant a chance to expedite long term plans – I think that was especially true for existing service providers.
Very few folks seems to developed a project out of the blue – but with the quick application turnaround and just the ominous nature of any federal application I think that makes sense.
Did you apply for Round Two Funding?
Almost 70 of the 93 applicants did not reapply. (I was able to check that with the online database of applications so there might be some false negatives if folks applied under a different name. I had checked into this a couple of weeks ago too to find out that there were fewer applicants and more money on the offer in Round Two. ) Some applicants felt that they no longer qualified – such as Hiawatha Broadband; they felt that some of the requirements conflicted with previously written contracts; others felt that their geographic location no longer qualified.
Many of the folks who reapplied pared down the scope of their projects. Either they included fewer states or fewer technologies. Recognizing that for many applicants the ARRA represented an opportunity for growth I think this paring down probably brought some folks closer to their pre-ARRA plans. For some folks that may have been a good call, for others it may be a lost (or slowed down) opportunity.
A few folks seemed to be less than pleased with the funding process. Someone alluded to spending 1500 hours on the applications; others just said straight out that they had experienced frustration. For other folks I think the ARRA funds were an opportunity to think big. I suspect that those who had worked with federal applications in the past may have had a different attitude going in.
Do you currently have a plan for moving forward regardless of ARRA funding?
The response rate on this question is even more nebulous than the previous questions. About 25 applicants reapplied for funding. About a dozen said they were definitely moving forward regardless, we’ve posted news on at least two in the last month: TTM and Keyon and seen other stories posted elsewhere.
Why did markets fall so hard last week?
Most folks assumed that it had something to do with fears of a Eurolehman, but it also seems possible that the market is reacting to what it normally reacts to: expectations of a slowing economy.
This was the essence of Richard Russell’s big “sell everything” call, that the market was telling him that a bad economy was around the corner.
Credit expert David Goldman at Asia Times is thinking along the same lines, that the weakening US economy is the next shoe to drop.
And the bad news is already coming:
1) Unemployment claims rose to 471,000 vs expectations of 439,000 in the week ended May 15;
2) One in seven American mortgages is behind in payments;
3) Foreclosures reached a record as the banks work through their backlog;
4) Mortgage applications last week fell to the lowest level since the survey was conducted;
5) Commercial real estate prices continue to fall.
Along these lines, this week we get Case-Shiller and the first revision to Q1 GDP, so, this idea might have more to go on very soon.
Don’t miss: The 13 housing markets that will never recover >
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American professional tennis player Venus Ebony Starr Williams had her 6-3 consecutive victories this Sunday on the 2010 French Open, beating Patty Schnyder. The performance should have been the center of attention for her audience, but something else cultivated their eyes: Williams’ outfit.
The record holder for the fastest serve struck by a woman claimed another title for her lacy black and red outfit “the illusion of being see-through“, as said by the AP. This made the most talked-about story since Williams wore a ’skimpy green uniform’ at the Australian Open last January whre she was majorly voted as Australian Open hottie.
Williams received her degree in fashion Design from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale with Cum Laude honors on December 13, 2007. She is the chief executive officer of “V Starr Interiors“, an interior design firm which she owns, located in Jupiter, Florida.
By June 2009, Williams was acclaimed as one of the most powerful women in America and one of the most successful women in drawing attention of the crowds.
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Victoria Day is a federal holiday in Canada that marks both the birthday of Queen Victoria and the official birthday of the current Canadian sovereign’s birthday.
Victoria Day, also known as May Two-Four, May Long and May Long Weekend, is a holiday celebrated on the Monday preceding May 24. It also marks the end of the winter season and the unofficial start to the summer season.
The Royal Union Flag must be flown from sunrise to sunset at all federal buildings, including airports, military bases, and other Crown owned property across the country during Victoria Day. There are evening fireworks display and parades in some cities. Many people gather in parks to enjoy this wonderful celebration.
Victoria Day is regarded as a public holiday at a national level. Schools are closed and people have a day off. Some stores are also closed during that day. Malls, theme parks and museums are open for visitors.
There will be a fireworks display in Toronto. For those interested in seeing fireworks, residents can head to the Beach at 9:30 p.m.
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Americans practically fell over themselves to take advantage of the home buyer credit before its expiration in April. Existing home sales rose to the annualized level of 5.77 million. That’s 7.6% higher than in March, and the largest increase since November — the last consumers were rushing to take advantage of the credit before it was set to expire. Yet, sales didn’t rise enough to decrease the housing inventory. On the contrary, inventory rose by 11.5%. Despite the increase in sales for April, the housing market remains fragile.
So first, the good news. Here’s a chart showing the change in home sales:
April 2010’s existing sales were 22.8% higher than a year earlier. You can see the steep rise created by the home buyer credit this spring. Indeed, the increase in sales due to the mortgage credit was quite predictable. Check out how the rate of existing home sales changed compared to one and two months prior to April compared to November:
You can see how close those rates are in both cases. However, the big difference is that last fall the starting point was higher than it was in early 2010. As a result, fewer existing home sales were recorded this time around.
Home prices also increased in April. The median price was up by 2.1% to $173,100 from $169,600 in March. April’s median was the highest price we’ve seen since September, and 4.0% higher than in April 2009.
So that all sounds great — home sales and prices are rising. If increasing sales were sustainable, then that would be good for the housing market. But the data for new mortgage applications for purchases in May indicates quite the opposite: they fell by a drastic 34% in May.
To make matters worse, housing inventory actually rose in April, despite the additional sales. And it increased a lot:
As you can see, it’s risen steeply since January — up 23.4%. This might look bad, but if sales plummet in May and the months that follow, as predicted by mortgage applications, then inventory will rise even further. At this point, it’s at 4.04 million homes, the highest we’ve seen since July 2009. But a month or two of significant gain could easily put it above record the 4.58 million level hit in July 2008. As foreclosures continue to occur at an elevated rate, a new high for inventory this summer wouldn’t be surprising.
Additional home inventory, along with lackluster buyer demand with the credit gone, should make it hard for prices to continue to rise in the short-term. We can expect some sobering news over the next few months about the housing market recovery.
Note: All data above is seasonally adjusted.
Mortgage – U.S. Housing Market – Business – Foreclosure – Real estate
Despite fears last year that the Air Force wouldn’t be able to afford many more GPS satellites, a massive $8bn upgrade is being planned for overhauling the satellites, replacing each of the 24 satellites over the next decade. More »
Global Positioning System – Air Force – United States – Geomatics – Earth Sciences
General Motors Chairman and CEO – Ed Whitacre
Early May auto sales figures show that Toyota’s sales are down 15 percent from the same period in April despite heavy incentive spending. On the other hand, General Motors and Nissan are enjoying an increase in sales from a month earlier.
“Toyota’s incentive program is falling on deaf ears. Most people who were open to getting deals from Toyota already made their purchases,” said Edmunds.com Senior Analyst Jessica Caldwell. “Toyota has not yet recovered from recent image problems.”
GM’s sales are up 9 percent during the beginning of May when compared to April and up 24 percent from May 2009. Nissan is seeing a month-to-month increase of 10 percent.
FoMoCo is also expecting May to be another good month and says that F-Series pickup sales will be up 30 percent from May 2009 due to the launch of the new 2011 Super Duty.
– By: Omar Rana
Source: AutoObserver
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[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] on Monday granted certiorari [order list, PDF] in five cases. In Williamson v. Mazda Motor of America [docket; cert. petition, PDF], the court granted a limited petition to decide whether a federal minimum safety standard [text], which authorizes automobile manufacturers to install a lap-only seat belt at the inboard seating positions of a vehicle, preempts a state tort action alleging that the manufacturer should have installed a lap and shoulder belt in one of those seating positions. A California state appeals court [official website] held [opinion, PDF] that a state action was preempted by Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 208 [text], which requires lap and shoulder seat belt assemblies only for outboard seating. Petitioners claim that Mazda [corporate website] had a duty to warn of safety risks associated with lap only seat belts under Wyeth v. Levine [opinion, PDF; JURIST report], in which the Supreme Court ruled that federal approval of labels giving warnings about effects of drugs does not bar lawsuits under state law claiming inadequate warnings of a health risk.
The court also granted a limited petition in Sossamon v. Texas [docket; cert. petition, PDF] to decide whether an individual may sue a state or state official in his official capacity for damages for violations of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act [42 USC s. 2000cc text], which grants prisoners permission to obtain injunctive and declaratory relief against the government when it imposes a substantial burden on the religious exercise of a inmate. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed [opinion, PDF] a grant of summary judgment in favor of Texas and ordered further proceedings to determine if Texas had been exceeded its bounds under the act by prohibiting Sossamon to use the prison chapel for Christian worship, even though it was available for other uses.
The court granted certiorari to another federal preemption case on Monday in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion [docket; cert. petition, PDF]. The court will decide whether the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) [text], which provides for judicial facilitation of private dispute resolution through arbitration when the transaction involves interstate commerce, preempts states from enforcing alternate solutions when arbitration clauses are considered unconscionable. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held [opinion, PDF] that the FAA does not preempt a California unconscionability law, which allowed a class action against AT&T mobile despite a contractual clause prohibiting such proceedings.
In Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn [docket; cert. petition, PDF] and Garriott v. Winn [docket; cert. petition, PDF], the court granted a consolidated petition, allowing one hour for oral argument. The court will determine the constitutionality of an Arizona tax credit for donations to organizations that provide scholarships at private schools, which allows scholarships funded by religious organizations to be granted only to students attending parochial schools. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held [opinion, PDF] that the taxpayers had standing to challenge the constitutionality of the law and allowed the claim to proceed. The outcome will determine if tax credit program unconstitutionally endorses or advances religion simply because taxpayers choose to direct more contributions to religious organization than nonreligious ones.
In Skinner v. Switzer [docket; cert. petition, PDF], the court will decide whether a convicted prisoner seeking access to biological evidence for DNA testing may assert a civil rights claim under Section 1983 [text] or if such a claim is cognizable only under a writ of habeas corpus. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed [opinion, PDF] a district court decision to dismiss Skinner’s s. 1983 claim seeking access to DNA evidence that may prove his innocence in the murders for which he is now sentenced to death, stating that relief could only be sought through habeas corpus. The Supreme Court court also granted a stay of execution until the case is decided.
The court dismissed [opinion, PDF] a writ of certiorari as improvidently granted in Robertson v. US ex rel. Watson [docket; JURIST report], which challenged the constitutionality of a District of Columbia law under which a private party can bring an action for criminal contempt. The decision included a lengthy dissent from Chief Justice Roberts joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Sonia Sotomayor, maintaining that a criminal action can only be brought against a defendant by society as a whole, and therefore the lower court erred in its judgment upholding the law.
Also Monday, the Supreme Court delivered a per curiam opinion for a summary reversal in the capital case of Jefferson v. Upton [docket]. The court reversed and remanded the judgment of the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which held that ineffective council defenses under habeas claims are subject to a higher standard than the normative “strong presumption of correctness” standard. The court’s opinion is its twelfth summary reversal this session.
Balaton Group colleagues Jørgen Nørgård, John Peet & Kristín Vala Ragnarsdóttir have a nice history of The Limits to Growth in Solutions.
Nokia and Yahoo have announced today in New York, a strategical alliance to jointly offer e-mail services, instant messaging, mapping and navigation. The Internet search engine Yahoo and the largest mobile phone maker in the world Nokia have reached a partnership through which Yahoo will offer Web services for Nokia terminals.
Under the agreement, submitted by the two CEOs of both companies, Carol Bartz by Yahoo and Kallasvuo Olli-Peka contributing to Nokia, the Finnish company exclusively offer maps and navigation services for Yahoo. Thus, the search will be integrated into the Nokia Maps service, Ovi Maps.
At the same time, mail services and services that incorporate into your Nokia smartphones are offered by Yahoo. The companies expect that during the second half of this year the results of this alliance in online services will already be available, although its global launch will not take place until 2011.
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