word

Dragging a mouse to select text in Microsoft Word requires the precision of a diamond cutter, or seems to, anyway. I prefer to press the Ctrl, Shift, and arrow keys to make my text selections. Throw in a couple of function keys, and I can use my keyboard to select text faster than any mouser can.

To select a word at a time, press Ctrl-Shift and the left or right arrow key. Ctrl-Shift and the up and down arrow keys select a paragraph at a time. If you get tired of holding down the Shift key, simply press F8 to … Read more

Google on Tuesday released the final version of Ad Manager, free software that lets smaller online publishers deal with some elements of offering and planning advertisements.

The software can be used to manage advertising inventory, with features to help them sell ads, deliver them, and forecast demand. It can deal both with ads on a publisher's site and on affiliated network sites. And conveniently for Google, it can be integrated with Google's AdSense service, so Google can display its own ads for any unsold ad inventory. With AdSense, Google shares ad revenue with publishers.

Google announced the release … Read more

Google plans to update its mechanism for ad quality scoring, a critical measurement that influences whether advertisements are placed next to search results so that judgments of ad quality are made immediately.

Google uses an auction system to determine which advertisers' ads are placed next to search results, but the winners of the auction are determined by more than how much an advertiser is willing to pay. Google also effectively raises minimum bid requirements for ads that don't meet its quality criteria, such as a good click-through rates or, in a newer addition, the speed at which an advertisers' … Read more

Andrew Mager posted an illustrated play-by-play of Saturday's WordCamp, a conference devoted to the popular open-source blogging platform WordPress. According to Mager's report, the hosted version of WordPress has 2.3 million new blogs in 12 months and 35 million posts, and more than 6.5 billion page views.

Of particular interest for the WordPress crowd is BuddyPress, a set of plug-ins that brings Facebook-like features, such as friends, groups, private messaging, status updates, and extended profiles, to the blogging platform. (WordPress competitor Six Apart also recently introduced a social dimension to its Movable Type platform.)

As Mager … Read more

Originally intended for blogging, but customizable into just about any configuration, WordPress is the Firefox of cross-platform content management systems, including the iPhone. Extensible and proud of it, the program itself is known for having one of the simplest installations of any CMS available.

The download is a ZIP file that comes with instructions on how to install it to your server, requiring an FTP client and administrator-level rights. Documentation for the ''five-minute install'' at its Web site is extensive, clear, and concise. The WordPress support forums haven't failed me yet in answering even my most difficult questions.

Without … Read more

Microsoft on Tuesday released its August 2008 security bulletin. Bulletins rated "critical" concern Microsoft Access 2003 and earlier; Microsoft Word 2002 and 2003; Microsoft Excel; and Microsoft Office 2000, Microsoft Office XP and Microsoft Office 2003. A cumulative patch for Internet Explorer also is rated critical.

"Important" bulletins affect Windows Internet Protocol Security (IPsec); Outlook Express and Windows Mail; Microsoft Windows Event System; Windows Messenger; and Microsoft PowerPoint. All Microsoft security patches for both Windows and Office software are available via Microsoft Update or via the individual bulletins detailed below.

MS08-041: Critical

Titled "Vulnerability in … Read more

I recently finished working on a project that generated a dozen separate reports published together in a single booklet. Each report was from three to eight pages long, and most of them included at least one table or chart.

When we were done, several of my co-workers commented on how nicely the reports were laid out. All I had done was create a Word template with a simple two-column layout for long text sections.

To create this template, open a new document, type a dummy document title on the first line, choose a font type and size (I used 12-point … Read more

Google has added some abilities for advertisers to control and track their display advertisements.

Advertisers now can keep an ad from being shown too frequently to each user, Google said on its corporate blog Thursday. Advertisers also can see data about how many people have seen an ad campaign and the average number of times people have seen the ads.

Google also is letting advertisers see "view-through conversion" statistics, which measure when a person who's been shown an ad visits the advertiser's Web site. This is significant because advertisers want to know how influential their ads … Read more

Google has taken its popular Google Trends and launched a spin-off product called Google Insights for Search. Geared toward advertisers, it's a tool to track a particular search term's popularity across the Web and geographic regions of the world.

For Google, this can help boost advertiser confidence and potentially win its program some new converts who would've otherwise been skeptical regarding how effectively they could target an online ad campaign.

With Google Insights for Search, you can search for a term to track how much it's been googled over time, where on a "heat map&… Read more