Storybook Lane ordered to refund shoppers — again

Storybook Lane, an online company previously sued by the Washington Attorney General’s Office, must once again refund consumers nationwide. The Kennewick-based company, which sells home décor for children’s bedrooms, violated the terms of a 2008 settlement by failing to deliver orders, issue refunds and respond to customer inquiries. Original post

Open Data for Public Health: Bring DontEat.At to San Francisco

In a powerfully argued post at GovLoop back in January, Canadian open data advisor David Eaves offered a solution for saving millions in public health costs: create data standards around restaurant healthfulness inspection scores and incorporate them into consumer-oriented websites like Yelp and OpenTable. Last night on Gov 2.0 Radio, Allison Hornery of CivicTEC inRead… Read more »

Heierbacher: Dialogue and Deliberation as the Basis Sustainable Decision Making

Sandy Heierbacher, Director of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD), gives a nice two-paragraph summary this morning of what her organization’s work is all about: […] Our most urgent problems seem even more unsolvable because of our inability to come together civilly and discuss issues and potential solutions in depth with all “sides.”Read… Read more »

Storm Clouds on the Horizon?

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP. The recent Amazon cloud outage at its Northern Virginia data center will raise concerns among CIO’s looking to the “public cloud” to improve IT service delivery and reduce day-to-day operating costs. Industry claims of superior “up-time” performance, reliability and massive redundancy must now be revisitedRead… Read more »

U.S. Kills Osama Bin Laden

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration used DNA testing and other means to confirm that elite American forces in Pakistan had in fact killed Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, officials said Monday, as the world absorbed the stunning news. GO TROOPS!

Winning Business from the Federal Government

Competing for government contracts is always challenging, and it is even more so for small firms. All agencies have to set aside work for small businesses, with additional considerations given for minority-, woman- and veteran-owned companies. But it is up to each company to find out about those opportunities. To help shed some light onRead… Read more »

Anonymous donors, Facebook franking, and more political law links for today

BREAKING NEWS: BIN LADEN KILLED IN RAID. Yahoo! TRUMP, PERSONAL FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE, AND THE DECISION. The Post looks at Donald Trump’s personal financial disclosure obligations if he becomes a candidate. “He won’t officially declare his candidacy because the Ethics in Government Act requires those running for federal office to file disclosures of their personal finances.”Read… Read more »