Two of my favorite links in this week's roundup are the HTML5 Please site by Opera developer Divya Manion and the 30 Cheat Sheets link. Hope you find some of the resources helpful to you too.

CSS

• Modular Front-End Development with LESS: This quick intro to LESS, a CSS pre-processor, focuses on variables, mixins, and nested rules.
• Animate to an Inline Style: Chris Coyier shares a great tip on how to animate to an inline style with a simple change to the declaration of the @keyframe.
• Full CSS3 HTML5 Contact Form with No Images: Interesting techniques by Stéphanie Walter for creating and styling a form, with a disclaimer about compatibility issues with older browsers. I liked some of her strategies and hope to use them in future forms.  

HTML

• Jumpstart Your Web Project With HTML KickStart: Created by Joshua Gactke, the HTML KickStart framework allows you to quickly create web page prototypes.
• The State of HTML5 Video: Longtail Video, the developers of the popular JW Player, share what HTML5 video can and can't support in this report detailing market share of browsers, media formats, tag attributes, and accessibility.
• HTML5 Please: Thanks to Opera developer Divya Manion for creating this new site for how to use HTML5 responsibly. The search filter allows you to quickly see what browser support is available. View code snippets,working demos, great collection of links and developer resources.

WordPress

• WordPress Move: Free plugin that allows you to backup your WordPress installation, restore it at any time, change the domain name and move it to a new server.
• Restoring WordPress After A Crash: It happens to everyone, but do you have a checklist of what to do the next time WordPress crashes on you? This post provides valuable information on troubleshooting and restoring your WordPress installation.
• The Ultimate Quickstart Guide to Speeding Up Your WordPress Site: The guide provides step-by-step instruction on plugins, database optimization, image optimization, CSS sprites and more to help make your site speedy.

Accessibility

• Accessible Media Player: Thanks to Nomensa for releasing the source code of their accessible media player as open source this week. 
• Is the Government Complying With its New Standard on Web Accessibility? Help us Find Out!: The Alliance for the Equality of Blind Canadians is asking for help from Canadians on how well the Government of Canada is complying with the new standards for web accessibility.
• iBooks Author: How to Make Your iBooks Accessible: Apple provides guidelines for making iBooks accessible to people with visual impairments. 
• Five Infographics on Web Accessibility for Designers: Reading order, heading structure, font size and line length are just a few of the key concepts to keep in mind as you develop websites and web applications. Great collection of infographics. Did you know there are more US citizens who are hard of hearing than US citizens (4.5%) who are visually impaired?

User Experience

• Onsite Insight: Advice From a UX Apprentice: Anne-Marie Florea shares her experiences and observations working as a student worker in user experience for Nokia. 
• Better UX Portfolios: Looking for advice for how to create your user experience portfolio? Here's the post for you.
• Usability Professionals Association International 2012 Conference: Get your tickets now (first 200 registrants get special pricing!). The international conference in Las Vegas, New Mexico opens early registration Jan 30. 
• 8 Tips for a Sane IA: Alastair Campbell outlines what every team should know before they start a web project.
• Wireframing for a Responsive Web Design: Displaying a complex website on a mobile device requires compromises, says Paul Boag. As we think and design responsively, developers and designers face many challenges. Thank you Paul for offering your tips on overcoming those challenges.

What I Found Interesting

• 12 Things Happy People Do Differently: I love this post from Jacob Sokol, with number 4, "Practice Acts of Kindness" my favorite. 
• 30 Must Have Cheat Sheets for Web Designers and Developers: From Photoshop to PHP to HTML to color, you'll find at least one cheat sheet to add to your web design toolbox.
• Responsive Design Test Page Bookmarklet: Written by Benjamin Keen, a very simple way to test responsive design and see how a page looks under different screen sizes.
• The Hitchhikers Guide to Python: As the authors point out, "this is an opinionated guide", currently under heavy development. Intended for both the novice and expert Python user, the guide offers best practices for installation, setup and usage. 
• The Depressing Truth About Why Women Need College Degrees: Sad to learn that women, and people of color, earn less than white men, even when they have more education or work longer hours.

At today's webinar, Jerimiah Owyang of Altimeter Group shared the latest research on social business and social media readiness, based on 63 interviews, 144 survey respondents of medium and large size companies, and analysis of 50 social media case studies around crises.

I was impressed with the case studies and insights Jeremiah shared, as well as his advice for managing social media presence for companies, both large corporations and small businesses. 

Key Takeaways

1. Create a firm foundation for social media, with:
   1. Education
   2. Thought policy
   3. Process
2. It takes trained professionals to manage your online presence. Only 50% of companies said their employees were trained in social media.
3. Your social media goals must meet business goals. ROI is not about fans and followers, it's about KPI's. (Business goals are getting more leads, bringing more feet into your store, improving the customer experience)
4. Make your social media policy clear, what's allowed and what's not allowed.
   1. Don't write the policy with "legalese" words. 
   2. Need an example of a good social media policy? Check out the social media policy Cisco published online.
5. Consider a social media certification program for your employees. 
6. US Department of Defense has an internal social media learning program.
7. For companies with more than 1000 customers, the average size of the social media team is 11 people.
8. Set expectations for your customers. If you can't allocate a person to respond to customers 24/7, put that in your profile bio.
9. Have a triage policy. What do you do if someone speaks negatively about your business or product? Here's a chart Jerimiah shared on managing response:
   
   
    
10. Decentralized social media account control is not scalable. It's problematic for all internal parties to connect properly.
11. Zappo's uses the "Honeycomb" social media method. Each employee is empowered to engage in interaction.
12. For IBM, the goal of the social media guidelines is not to constrain, but empower employees.
13. Metrics: How does social media impact your business goals? Are you using social data to improve your products/services or design new products/services?
14. Companies that are advanced in their social media usage invest in four social business requirements:
    1. Establish governance
    2. Define real-time processes
    3. Foster a culture of learning
    4. Organize into a scalable formation
15. It takes three to five years for a company to evolve to an advanced social business organization.

This year was the 30th anniversary of the Plymouth Ice Festival, and I don't think I've missed one year.  

Ice carving contests, competitions for culinary art students from local community college students, food and lighting of the nightly fire and ice torches - there was something for everyone. This year the dinosaur sculpture was a big hit, since young children could sit on it.