This New Year’s eve, please be careful. Every year, all around the globe, people drink and drive. They injure and kill themselves and others. 

We all know better. Don’t do something you, your family and your friends will regret for the rest of your life. 

Have a Happy and Safe New Year!

(Depending on your browser security settings, may need to click twice to start the video. If you are receiving this via email, or want to open the YouTube page with the video, just click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a98QbYbhkSs)

One of the blogs I monitor is Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen (www.presentationzen.com).

He just sent out a link to a Flash video of the original Drifters 50’s classic: White Christmas.

badaboo.free.fr/merryxmas.swf

Watch it, smile and have a very, merry Christmas.

The video is here:
snipurl.com/1vpds

See William Patry’s comments here:
williampatry.blogspot.com/2007/12/what-do-people-actually-think-copyright.html

Cheryl Wise (starttoweb.com) has alerted me that the Nielsen Norman Group is making their $124 accessibility report, “Beyond ALT Text: Making the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities”, available for free. This report has 75 best practice tips for increasing the usability and accessibility of your website.I do not know how long this will last.

www.nngroup.com/reports/accessibility

Today, Kimberly A. Fabrizio wrote me. She has a Multiple Sclerosis blog (sunshineandmoonlight.wordpress.com) and wanted me to list her blog on my directory of MS websites in the MS section of my website (JSH.us/MS).

I went to check it out and it clearly qualified and I quickly added it.

But then, as I continued to explore it, I discovered a new blog. Kimberly’s blog is very new, just started in Dec 2007. It is telling her new story of her discovery she has MS and her personal work to deal with this.

It is not very often I am privileged to discover a new blog.

Kimberly’s writing style is open and sharing. She lets you feel what she is feeling as she deals with this new fact in her personal life.

I’ve subscribed to updates using FeedBlitz. I’ll be tracking it every time she updates it.

Oh, and Kimberly is a red head! I love red heads!

valleywag.com/tech/online-video/here-comes-another-takedown-332666.php

It was put up on YouTube. It was quickly taken down by a DMCA request claiming copyright violation. But you can still see it here. At least you can as I write this.

Separate from the DMCA question, I think it is a good parody.

Consider this:

An average of 18 veterans commit suicide each and every day of the year, according to recent statistics from the Veterans Administration (VA). That’s 126 veterans who kill themselves every week. Or some 6,552 who take their own lives each year. Our veterans are killing themselves at twice the rate of other Americans.

One quarter of the homeless people in America are military veterans. That’s one in every four. Is that ragged man huddled on the steam grate in a brutal winter wind a Vietnam vet? Did that younger man panhandling for pocket change on the street corner fight in Kandahar or Fallujah?

Read more: www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/23133.html