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Three finalists have been selected for the Colorado Supreme Court vacancy to be left by the Nov. 30 retirement of Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey.

The finalists are:

• Monica Marquez, deputy Colorado attorney general.

• David Prince, an El Paso County district judge.

• Robert Russel, a Colorado Court of Appeals judge.

They were chosen by the Supreme Court Nominating Commission, which reviewed candidates for the vacancy on Monday and Tuesday poor credit personal loans.

The names have been forwarded to Gov. Bill Ritter, who has 15 days from Tuesday to select one of the finalists.

Citizen comments regarding the finalists can be emailed to: judicial.appointments@state.co.us

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It’s a pretty good time to be Microsoft — but the company still has a lot to prove.

Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and the full roster of Microsoft’s top executives are meeting with financial analysts on Thursday to map out Microsoft’s strategy for maintaining its leadership in the corporate market and catching up to Apple and Google in the consumer space.

Analysts will be especially tuned in for what Microsoft says about its plans for tablets, Windows Phone 7, Bing and Kinect — businesses that all lag behind their rivals.

The company is coming off of one of its strongest quarters ever in terms of revenue and profit, as Windows 7 and Office sales have soared on renewed demand for PCs. Microsoft has sold nearly 200 million Windows 7 licenses, demonstrating an ability to bounce back from the Windows Vista debacle. Many corporate clients, which make up about three-quarters of Microsoft’s customer base, are beginning to refresh their computers and software, and most are expected to migrate to Windows 7 and Office 2010 by the end of next year.

The software giant has also embraced cloud computing in a way that impresses industry analysts. Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) responded to Google Apps’ threat to Office by launching a very functional, free online edition of Office 2010 in June. Microsoft’s unique "Azure" cloud platform helps businesses save money by moving existing applications built on Microsoft’s platform — as many corporate applications are — onto remote servers that are supported and serviced by Microsoft, allowing for remote access to data.

For consumers, on the other hand, Microsoft is struggling to keep pace with its competitors.

With search engine Bing, Microsoft has integrated some innovative and compelling ideas to make search more visual, intuitive and predictive of users’ intent — Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) has even copied many of Bing’s most unique features. Bing has grown its share of the search market by about 50% in a little over a year, and the revenue-sharing deal with Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) may help it gain scale.

But Bing still trails Google by a vast margin, and it continues to hemorrhage cash.

And then there’s Windows Phone 7, one of Microsoft’s biggest question marks.

With its last software release, Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft did fairly well in terms of global smartphone market share, but the company was is badly in the United States to more feature-rich phones like the iPhone, Research In Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry and Android-based devices.

Windows Phone 7 is a complete redesign of Microsoft’s mobile offering, focusing on a simple and unique user interface. But it’s not slated to debut until this fall — an eon in the fast-moving phone field, where the iPhone and Android continue to gobble up market share.

Tablets are also a glaring question that Microsoft will need to address on Thursday.

With the early success of Apple’s (AAPL, Fortune 500) iPad, many analysts are predicting that the tablet space will be one of the fastest-growing tech segments this decade, alongside smartphones. But Ballmer has only vaguely articulated a very generalized strategy for tablet computers, namely that Windows 7 will be on tablets "soon." But the CEO famously canned a turmoil-fraught Microsoft tablet project that had been in the works almost a decade before the iPad came to market. Analysts want more concrete answers about how Microsoft plans to compete in tablets.

Xbox is perhaps Microsoft’s greatest source of strength with consumers, outside of Windows.

With the much-hyped, controllerless Kinect accessory set to go on sale this fall, Microsoft hopes to grow its user base even more by adding on the casual gamers who have embraced Nintendo’s Wii. Microsoft loves to sell Xbox’s ability to download media and stream it across a PC, Zune or Windows Phone. The consumer cloud is a high-growth space that many tech companies are quick to embrace, but given its lack of success so far with Zune media players and Windows Phone, Microsoft has to be concerned about what happens if/when Apple allows its users to stream their iTunes libraries across multiple devices over the Internet.

Microsoft’s consumer divisions, which include mobile, have failed to consistently make money for the company. The company let entertainment division chief Robbie Bach head out the door in May.

Here’s a telling sign of how challenging Microsoft is finding that market: Though it has many questions to answer on the consumer front, Don Mattrick, who replaced Bach, is not scheduled to speak on Thursday. 

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WASHINGTON — A brewing Capitol Hill fight pits California winemakers against beer wholesalers and others who are hoping to outflank a landmark Supreme Court decision.

One hundred and seven lawmakers, nearly one-fourth of the House of Representatives, support legislation that would make it easier for states to hinder direct shipments of alcohol. The bill in effect takes the fizz out of a 2005 Supreme Court decision that said some bans on direct shipments violated the Constitution.

The bill’s supporters say they want to bolster state alcohol enforcement powers.

"With (the bill), Congress is taking an important step toward ending the erosion of the states’ ability to regulate alcohol," the president of the National Beer Wholesalers Association, Craig Purser, declared when the bill was introduced earlier this year.

The bill’s opponents say it would benefit booze distributors at the expense of wineries and consumers.

"It really threatens the progress that’s been made on direct shipping of wine," U.S. Rep. George Radanovich, R-Calif., said Friday. "It puts into jeopardy all of the work we’ve done."

Himself a former winemaker, Radanovich co-chairs the 250-member Congressional Wine Caucus. The caucus supports direct shipping and will play a big role in what happens next.

Realistically, the legislation to complicate direct shipments has little to no chance in the remaining months of this Congress.

Its chief author, Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., is a lame duck. Its opponents include key lieutenants of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who often champions her home state’s wine industry. Two months after Delahunt quietly introduced his bill, a Senate version is nowhere in sight.

Politically, though, the bill signals a resurgence in the long-running struggle that pits different elements of the alcohol business against one another.

"We have to be diligent anytime a bill like this takes shape," Radanovich said. "We have to be sure we can block it."

Direct shipments cut out the distributors and middlemen, allowing wineries to sell straight to customers who may have visited in person or browsed via the Internet. Modest-sized wineries, in particular, have considered direct shipping a retail boon.

"It’s definitely helped; there’s no question about it," Patrick Campbell, the owner of Laurel Glen Winery in California’s Sonoma County, said Friday. "The fact that you can ship direct to some markets creates an opening, and that scares the hell out of the distributors."

After a protracted legal campaign, the Supreme Court in the case called Granholm v. Heald struck down laws that banned out-of-state direct shipments while permitting those from in-state wineries. The court concluded that the state laws violated the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which prohibits states from erecting barriers against one another.

Driven in part by subsequent legal or legislative action, 38 states now permit some form of direct shipping. Missouri and Illinois both allow direct shipping of wine, but with limits to the number of cases per winery.

Enter the Comprehensive Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness Act.

As introduced April 15, the legislation significantly raises the legal hurdles for a successful challenge to a state’s direct wine-shipment restriction. The bill declares that a state’s alcohol control law "shall be upheld" unless the challengers can prove, essentially, that the law serves no purpose.

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Monday is the last day for Harris County residential and commercial property owners to protest the property values determined by the Harris County Appraisal District.

Property owners get an extra day to file a protest this year since May 31 fell on Memorial Day.

Homeowners whose houses are valued at $1 million or less can use the iSettle program on the Harris County Appraisal District Web site to try to lower their valuation payday advances. The account number and iFile number mailed to the property owner is required for handling the process online.

The June 1 deadline does not apply to business personal property and some real property accounts, which will have more time to protest.

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Continental Airlines is recalling some of the pilots it furloughed several years ago, as the company ramps up international flights and replaces retiring older pilots.

Continental (CAL, Fortune 500) spokeswoman Julie King said the airline is recalling 15 of the 147 pilots it furloughed in 2008. In addition, it is putting more than 100 pilots back on active status from the voluntary leaves of absence that they took in 2008.

Some of these pilots will be flying the company’s two recently acquired Boeing 777s, which will be used for international flights, King said.

Continental furloughed the pilots during a particularly tough year for the airline industry, which has struggled to cope with stagnant business and vacation travel thanks to the recession, as well as volatile fuel prices.

"We are pleased to see our pilots returning," said Capt. Jay Pierce, a Continental pilot and a chairman for the Continental chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association. "With the anticipated delivery of new aircraft, the improvements in the economy and the expectations for increased passenger travel during the upcoming summer vacation season, the return of our furloughed pilots — all of them — is needed to maintain the level of service that Continental is known for."

Hunter Keay, senior airline analyst for Stifel Nicolaus & Co payday lenders., said the recall is a small but positive sign for the airline industry.

"Clearly, the industry is recovering, but I think certain regions are performing better than others, and certain airlines are outperforming others," said Keay. "I think that’s a bullish indicator for the demand that Continental sees in its core markets."

The recall is occurring as Continental prepares to merge with UAL Corp.’s United Airlines.

UAL Corp. (UAUA, Fortune 500) announced on May 3 that United will merge with Continental in a deal worth $3.2 billion, creating the world’s largest airline.

The combined company, which will fly under the United moniker and Continental logo, will be larger than Delta Air Lines (DAL, Fortune 500), which became the country’s largest airline when it merged with Northwest Airlines in 2008.

Helane Becker, airline analyst for Jesup & Lamont Securities Corp., said the airlines pledged that they would not lay off pilots as part of the merger.

She cast Continental’s pilot recall as a sign that the airline recognized that its latest staff cuts were "more muscle than fat." 

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SSM Health Care Corp. will receive $16.5 million in tax-exempt bonds to renovate and equip its hospitals and health care facilities, the Missouri Department of Economic Development announced Wednesday.

SSM Health Care a Catholic, not-for-profit health system will make improvements to Cardinal Glennon Children Medical Center in St. Louis, St. Clare Health Center in Fenton, St. Joseph Health Center in St. Charles, St. Joseph Hospital West in Lake Saint Louis, DePaul Health Center in Bridgeton and St. Mary’s Health Center in Jefferson City.

The state’s private activity bonds, provided by the federal government, are part of a greater bond issue of $581 million that will be sold in Wisconsin and Missouri, said SSM spokesman Chris Sutton.

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A new report from the measurement company Nielsen shows that ads on outside-the-house video screens — in places like health clubs, gas stations and elevators — can reach many more people than ads on prime-time television.

The report, called the “Fourth Screen Network Audience Report,” (Nielsen is calling it the “fourth screen” after television, the computer and mobile), is expected to be released on Monday. The company researched 10 screen networks, from companies like NCM Media Networks and Screenvision, which run ads in movie theaters, to Gas Station TV, which places screens on gas pumps.

“If you took the 10 networks that we measured and put a spot on each of the 10” for a month, “you’d draw more exposures than having a spot on every one of the top 20 programs in prime time” in a given week, said Paul Lindstrom, senior vice president of the Nielsen Co.

The screens are part of a phenomenon of place-based advertising that has gained popularity as consumers move away from traditional media. The networks try to capture people as they are about to buy something, or when they are bored and undistracted — waiting for a movie to start, for instance.

The networks have been pushing Nielsen to create a standard measurement so that they can better sell their ad time to agencies.

“The agencies ask, ‘Why are you better, why should I take some money and not run it on traditional television or somewhere else, and run it with you?’ ” said David Leider, chief executive of Gas Station TV. “If there’s no legitimate measurement behind it, there’s no point for an agency or client to look at it.”

“They were measured all differently by each of the venues, so there was no consistency in the marketplace and no third-party, independent view of it,” said Terrie Brennan, senior vice president for new business development at Nielsen.

To get the ratings, Nielsen looked at variables like how long people spent in front of the screens and the proximity to the screen — “so in the health clubs, it’s not going to be everybody who swipes in, it’s going to be people in that cardio room that can see those televisions,” Lindstrom said. It then interviewed viewers to get demographic information. The number of people interviewed per screen network was as low as 298, for the bar/restaurant TV network Zoom Media & Marketing’s Social Network, and as high as 26,052 for NCM and Screenvision.

Nielsen found that the screen networks reached a broad audience. For example, ads on Screenvision and NCM’s networks in October had 61.7 million exposures. That compared with an average of 3 million viewers 18 years and older for a typical prime-time commercial on broadcast television in the same period. So an advertiser could either take out a monthlong series of ads on the theater networks, or buy about 20 prime-time commercials, to reach the same audience size.

However, some agencies and networks raised questions about Nielsen’s approach. Jack Sullivan, senior vice president and out-of-home activation director at Starcom USA, part of the Starcom MediaVest Group division of the Publicis Groupe, said he was not certain that Nielsen took into account all the differences in these networks.

“A doctor’s office is different than a grocery store is different than an airport is different than an elevator,” he said. “So the consumer is different in every one of those categories, and the screens are different sizes.

”There’s really no common denominator,“ he said.

By measuring out-of-home screens with the same tools it uses to measure television, Nielsen lets these networks try to be included among the big broadcast ad purchases.

”More and more, now that we have these results, at least in 2010, we’re starting to get looked at from a broadcast budget,“ said Scott Marden, research director for Captivate Network, which runs video screens in elevators. ”The budgets, and the dollars, are really in the TV world.“

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Former U.S. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall — uncle of U.S. Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, father of another senator and patriarch of one of the West's leading political families — died Saturday at his Santa Fe home. He was 90.

Stewart Udall was Interior secretary from 1961 to 1968 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Previously, he was a congressman from Arizona.

Udall helped shape federal policies that have steered development of the West for half a century.

He was involved in crafting the Wilderness Act, under which millions of acres of the West are preserved in their natural state, and an early version of the Endangered Species Act. He also presided over a major expansion of the national park system, including sprawling Canyonlands National Park near Moab, Utah.

But he also presided over an unprecedented period of development of the West's water resources, including completion of Glen Canyon Dam, which created Lake Powell on the Colorado River.

After leaving office, he led legal battles on behalf of American Indian miners and others sickened by uranium mining and above-ground nuclear tests.

He was the brother of Mark Udall's father, the late Morris "Mo" Udall, who served 15 terms in Congress and ran for president; and was the father of U payday loan no faxing.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M.

In a statement, Mark Udall called his uncle "a great public servant, and a wonderful writer and storyteller. He was passionate about conservation, and he was a champion of Native peoples. All those who care about our national parks and the environment will miss his voice.

"Beyond his life in public service, he was the patriarch of our family, a great mentor and role model," the senator added. "The Udall family will not be the same without him."

Current Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a former Colorado senator, called Udall "one of the greatest secretaries of the Interior in my lifetime … a pioneer and a visionary in protecting America's natural resources and cultural heritage."

"Stewart Udall left an indelible mark on this nation and inspired countless Americans who will continue his fight for clean air, clean water and to maintain our many natural treasures," President Barack Obama said in a statement.

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The St. Louis Newspaper Guild has scheduled a March 27 vote on the terms of a proposed 5 1/2-year contract with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The newspaper confirmed Wednesday that it has made its final offer to the guild, which represents P-D employees in the newsroom, advertising and building service.

The offer asks guild members to accept an immediate 6 percent wage cut along with an unpaid, one-week furlough in each of the next three years. Wages would increase by 2.5 percent in each of the final three years of the contract, if minimum revenue thresholds are reached.

Last week, Post-Dispatch supervisors learned that 2010 will bring another one-week furlough, the third time they have been asked to take unpaid leave in less than two years. The guild accepted a one-week unpaid furlough last year as well.

As part of the current contract proposal, the Post-Dispatch agreed to a six-month moratorium on layoffs so long as the pending guild contract is ratified by April 1 cheapest personal loan rates. The pact also would freeze pensions and eliminate medical benefits for Post-Dispatch retirees.

The contract negotiations, which began in 2009, dovetailed with declining industry revenue, as newspapers and magazines grappled with the recession and a slow economic recovery.

Last summer, the guild representing employees of the Boston Globe agreed to $10 million in concessions in a contract that curtailed salary, benefits and vacation time.

And earlier this month, workers at the Akron Beacon-Journal avoided a threatened strike by ratifying a contract that reduced their wages by a total of 10 percent, while cutting the workweek from 40 to 37.5 hours.

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Five former U.S. Treasury secretaries who have served both Republican and Democrat presidents have jointly called on Congress to implement the so- called Volcker Rule to limit the size and trading of banks.

Banks that benefit from public support via access to the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. shouldn’t “engage in essentially speculative activity unrelated to essential bank services,” John Snow, Paul O’Neill, Nicholas Brady, George Shultz and W. Michael Blumenthal wrote in a letter published by the Wall Street Journal.

Restricting proprietary trading by banks is a “key element in protecting our financial system and will assure that banks will give priority to their essential lending and depository responsibilities,” the former secretaries wrote.

The group also urged the U.S. government to take the lead at international meetings to win “broad agreement on this principle among the leading financial centers.”

U.S. President Barack Obama on Jan. 21 introduced a proposal he called the Volcker Rule to limit the size and trading activities of financial institutions and reduce risk- taking. The rule is named after former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker.

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