One of the most irritating things with Microsoft Word is paragraph numbering or bullets.

You start off the numbering or bullets; press Enter at the end of the paragraph and then press Enter again to give a gap between the paragraphs… to make it easier to read. And what does Word do? Cancels your numbers or bullets!

Here’s 4 tips on how you can get nicely spaced paragraphs and keep your numbering or bullets working perfectly…

1) Set your numbered paragraph format to have a spacing of 12 pt (i.e. 1 line) before it. When typing numbered paragraphs you will find it easier to keep the spacing and the numbering sequence that you want.

Increase the spacing before starting your numbered paragraphs with Ctrl + 0 (zero). The same keys can be used to remove the extra spacing when the numbered paragraphs are finished.

2) Suppress numbering for the next paragraph, use Shift & Enter instead of Enter. (This is not suitable for justified paragraphs).

3) For justified paragraphs: right (alternate) click the paragraph you want to stop numbering on and choose Skip Numbering from the quick menu.*

4) Restart paragraph numbering. If the numbering continues from a previous numbered section, alternate (right) click to display the quick menu and choose Restart Numbering

* If you do not have Skip Numbering on your quick menu you need to customise your menu and add the option:

From the menu: View, Toolbars, Customize, on the Toolbars tab, select Shortcut Menus

On the new toolbar that appears, Click on Text then Lists

In the Customize dialogue box Click the Commands tab, select All Commands

Click & Drag the SkipNumbering option from the right hand box to the Lists menu

In the other articles in this mini-series I share another 21 tips:

* Preparing Word - How to Stop Word being ‘bossy’ and taking over your document.

* Keyboard shortcuts (some well known, others not so well known) to save you time.

* 8 tips on how to get your page looking exactly as you want it to

* Creating Contents lists, quick tips for spell checking and hyphenation.

©2005 Original Work by Carol Bentley

Learn more about Persuading People to Buy… Subscribe to your free reports, with no obligation, at http://www.CarolBentley.com.

Carol is the author of ‘I Want to Buy Your Product… Have You Sent Me a Letter Yet? (How to create powerful sales letters, advertisements, flyers, brochures, web pages and newsletters that persuade hundreds, or even thousands, of additional customers and clients to buy from you!) by Carol A E Bentley (Rated 5-star on Amazon.co.uk) This book is available at a special offer at http://www.CarolBentley.com/offer.

Carol is one of the highest paid direct response copywriters available. If you would like to talk to Carol’s office about having her work on your current or next sales project you can use the contact form on her website http://www.CarolBentley.com/contact.asp.

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains was historically designed to serve mid-market first and then with addition and acquisition of new modules - Great Plains Dynamics architects planned to enter into corporate market. When Microsoft SQL Server took its place as relatively reliable and stable database platform, Great Plains gained scalability. Let’s consider the questions, you need to be placed and answered for your IT department in ERP selection, implementation, modification and customization.

• Business System value. For large publicly traded enterprise ERM application needs to be tailored to serve unique business processes. In the case of traditional ERP system for big businesses, such as Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft, the modules have very rich functionality and you can expect that majority of the required functionality is already present. In the case when the system is coming the way up from mid-size to large clientele - you expect more customization to be done. There are pluses and minuses of both approaches: in the case of traditional system you overpay for the functionality you do not need and probably consulting rates will be higher, in the case of Great Plains - you might need more customization hours with lower rates

• Implementation Partner Expertise. This is very important question. In the case of Great Plains you should be aware that typical Microsoft Business Solution partner/VAR serves local market and mid-size clients. Plus it might not have dedicated Great Plains developers - consultants may not segregate functional and technical consulting duties. Also look for your industry implementation expertise - if you are project organization - ask for Great Plains Project Accounting tailoring and integration expertise, if you are nation-wide placement agency and want to deploy payroll module for your temps - ask for US Payroll module customization and case studies

• Technology Diversity challenges. You should analyze your current technologies in use and cross-integration needs with Microsoft Great Plains - Lotus Notes/Domino, custom Oracle systems, Unix-based databases, such as DBII, Java/EJB oriented web systems, Siebel CRM solutions? If you have these so-called non-Microsoft platforms and systems and you need cross-integration - check if proposed Microsoft Business Solution partner has the expertise

• Do not be sold - select your provider proactively. It is not a secret that when VAR hears the name of your fortune 500 corporation - it deploys it’s sales heavy artillery. You need to find people who could do the job and you need to find them via independent objective research.
Good luck with selection, implementation and customization, if you have issues or concerns - we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies - USA nationwide Microsoft RMS, Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving clients in Chicago, California, Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia, Arizona, Minnesota, UK, Australia and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is CMA, Great Plains Certified Master, Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer. You can contact Andrew: andrewk@albaspectrum.com

Intro
This concise article will tell you in plain English how you can promote your software easily and effectively.

Submit your software
I recommend submitting your software to upload.com. It costs $79 dollars a year, but is well worth it. It will display your product on download.com and its partner network made up of 20 other major download sites. Download.com is so popular that if your product was only listed on download.com it would still be worth the yearly fee.

Use Rudenko’s (submit.rudenko.com) software submission service to submit your software to hundreds of software archives. Unlike auto-submit programs, Rudenko has employees manually submit your software to each archive so it is less likely to be rejected.

Rudenko’s software submission service is also beneficial because most of the software archives will have a link to your website. Relevant pages that link to your website increase your link popularity. The higher your link popularity the better your search engine ranking will be, especially in Google. Rudenko’s software submission service costs $70 and if you include “David Mahler - 10% discount” in the comment field you will receive 10% off.

Promote through your website
If you have a website than you can promote your software for free by utilizing effective search engine optimization techniques.

The two key factors for search engine optimization are effective titles and clear body text. Make sure that the titles are relevant, unique to each page, and include key phrases that are likely to be searched. Body text should be clear, concise and saturated with key phrases. Feel free to add your key phrase as many times as it seems natural to do so. Before you publish your masterpiece, test your website copy by reading it out loud to yourself or to a friend. If it sounds awkward you probably need to take a few of those key phrases out. Remember it is important to write for both people and search engines.

For more information on search engine optimization I highly recommend highrankings.com.

Have someone else do the work
Websites like shareit.com and cj.com allow you to partner with affiliates that distribute your software for you. This is an easy way to get your product out there but you can expect to pay a commission to the affiliate.

Conclusion
Whether you are a sole proprietor or a major corporation, these software marketing techniques will be effective in promoting your software.

David Mahler started his business (Small Business Services) creating websites in 2002. His company has since extented his services to Intranet design, database design and website copywriting.

Here is some free software tools to help you build your own websites and create web products.

Learning new skills is not difficult. It just takes a bit of willingness to give it a go. You will feel great satisfaction knowing that you can do this stuff.

Zip Utility

HTML Editor

FTP Software

Screen Shot Software

Zip Utility

You just gotta have a zip utility if you intend to spend time on the Internet. I use Winzip for all my zipping and unzipping needs. It is fast and easy to use. If you would like to check out other zip utilities, go to download.com and do a search.

HTML Editor

To build web pages and eBooks, you’ll need some kind of HTML editor. I use 1st Page 2000 for all my HTML editing. It is 100% Free for ever with all features working. This page and web site is being built with this editor.

After the editor is installed, you’ll need some web pages to study. Search Google with the key words “free web page template”. Don’t worry, I just did it. Here is the search results.

Quick Lesson:

All I did to begin learning was to simply open up these templates and study the code from within the editor and try to relate it to what I could see on the actual web page. For example, here is a shot of code from within the HTML editor:

This is a screenshot of some code from this web page. Study the code and relate it to what you see on this page. The red and blue codes are commands which create a hyperlink and cause the link to open in a new browser window.

Take it easy. Learn one command at a time. It won’t be long before you get some web pages happening.

When you are ready to learn some more commands, go to HTML Goodies for a good range of Free tutorials.

FTP Software

To transfer your web site to the Internet, you’ll need an FTP program. Go to download.com to find several Free FTP programs available for download. I like WS_FTP because it is fast to learn and easy to use. Another popular program is CuteFTP.

Screen Shot Software

To capture images from your computer screen, you’ll need a program that will cut the image quickly and easily. I use a freeware program called SRip32. No installation is required and it is very user friendly.

You can also do a search at Google for even more free screen capture software programs.

About The Author

Read more of Ed’s articles at: www.ezau.com/latest/articles/.

Original article: www.ezau.com/latest/articles/04.shtml

Home page: www.ezau.com

Simple guide in sending fax through Internet: learn more about Email faxing
There is lots of Internet faxing services that enable you to send your faxes through the Internet. It is a type of online services that provide subscribers with the ability to send and receive faxes without a fax machine. Instead, Internet access and an email account are all the necessary. Internet faxes are received or sent in form of email attachments or normal fax machine copies.

Some of these Internet faxing services are free while others require you to pay a certain amount of money on a monthly basis. Some of the examples of Internet faxing services includes: eFax, Call Wave Internet faxing, Green Fax, Trust Fax, Fax it Nice, Fax Mate, Inter Fax, Air Com email fax, and My Fax.

How Internet fax normally works?

To send an Internet fax, the subscriber creates an email account. The fax content can be written in the body of the email, and attachments are normally permitted. The destination fax number is entered in the ‘To’ field, along with the Internet fax service name (efax for example). For example, if the fax number were 1-555-234-5678, the email would be addressed to 15552345678@efax.com. In the subject・field, user will need to input the recipient name, for example: Attn: Mr. Fax.

Receiving Internet faxes is easy; you do not need to be familiar with faxing software nor fax machines neither to use the Internet faxing interface. Normally, the email faxing services will install a small tools (toolbar or window box) into your PC as a plug-in inside the email program. Upon receipt, an automated program converts the email to a fax format, then faxes to the number supplied in the fax-header. The recipient receives the fax normally, through fax machine.

Why Internet fax?

There are numerous reasons to start implementing Internet faxing services in your business or personal usage. If you have ever owned a fax machine then you can understand how frustrating it is when it jams, cuts off page text, stops in the middle of a transmission, or the receiving machine is constantly busy or out of paper. Eventually you might ruin your own business because of all those communication troubles caused by the traditional fax machines. Life with Internet faxing (or sometimes known as email faxing) will be much easier- 24 hours ready, no more engage tones, and no more paper jamming. Faxes will always sent out and arrived smoothly via your email account.

Perhaps you have never owned a fax machine because of the initial investment and ongoing maintenance was far too costly. Think about it — the cost of the machine, the installation of a separate phone line to avoid conflicts with your answering machine, and the ongoing cost of replacement toner cartridges. With the invention of eFax services, now you never have to worry about these headaches with the soon-to-be extinct fax machine device.

Some get Internet faxing services because of their additional advantages. Let’s take eFax (owned by J2 Communication) for example. They are offering more than just Internet faxing solutions nowadays. With the recent introduction on their new product: eVoice, you can even get voice messages sent to your email accounts or forward it into your private number. With eVoice, even the smallest of businesses can benefit with a professional answering service today and save costs on answering machine and extra phone lines.

Wrapping things up, Internet services are one of the online services that can beneficial greatly to your business or personal expenses. However in order to get the best from it, one must be careful and review more on the faxing services that’s available in the market. Different Internet faxing packages are meant for different categories of users. If you only need to receive faxes, you can try out eFax Free which will cost you nothing; if you send faxes frequently and needs a toll-free number for your business, eFax Plus might be something you want to look at. If you are always on the road and need to send email faxes via mobile portal, Call Wave faxing services is recommended. To view more regarding on CallWave services: http://www.downloadcallwave.com; to view more on eFax services: http://www.myinternetfax.biz

Learn more about the services details when you are shopping for the right Internet faxing services: the reputation and customer feedbacks on the services, the ability to send to more than one fax number at a time, the faxing page capacity, the send/receive page amount-limit and the hidden cost of sending extra faxes are some factors that you do not want to miss out.

The author, Claudia Walters, is one of the expert writers in office tools and technology. People are not aware that they can send fax via internet, thus a website is built promoting top rated online faxing services.

Are you lost in the mess of documents that get passed around your company, never knowing what the latest version is and which one you should work on without worrying if someone else has already made the same editions that you are making? Perhaps you have heard of collaboration software solutions such as Documentum to help your company manage its documents that are passed around. Documentum is a very good solution to this problem but is it the only one? In this article you will be presented with some basic information about the differences in collaboration software from Documentum and NextPage.

What is collaboration software?

Collaboration software allows business professionals to work directly with other business professionals by allowing them to work together to create business documents, presentations, and budgets. Most collaboration software is centralized. This allows business professionals to work on the same documents at the same time from different locations. Some centralized collaboration software solutions include Groove Network, Microsoft SharePoint, Documentum, and Filenet.

Why use Documentum?

There are a few advantages to using centralized collaboration software such as Documentum. The main advantage being that they work very well for team collaboration. Documentum’s software keeps all files, projects, and data in one centralized location that everyone who is working on the project can access. This allows them to review and update the same document that everyone else has used, which essentially keeps everyone working on the same page.

Are there any drawbacks to Documentum?

While the collaboration software solution provided by Documentum is very useful and beneficial, there are a few drawbacks to using it. The main disadvantage being that Documentum’s software requires the use of an IT infrastructure. Another potential drawback is that it requires an extensive amount of installation time. This can be a major inconvenience to those business professionals who are always busy and on the go.

Other collaboration software options out there also require everyone you work with to have the same software in order to share information. All of these drawbacks to centralized collaboration software can be very expensive and inconvenient.

What else will work for my company?

NextPage provides an alternative solution to the centralized collaboration software. NextPage 1.5 Collaboration Software tracks documents with Digital Thread technology. Say, for instance, that you are working on your company’s budget. You want to make sure that your facts and figures are correct so you send your spreadsheet to several of your co-workers for review. They look over the spreadsheet and make the necessary changes. They then return their spreadsheet version to you, and with NextPage 1.5, you simply merge the document versions together into one. NextPage 1.5 lets you see all of this visually via a graphical version history. With the graphical version history, you would always know where the various versions of your spreadsheet are stored, what changes have been made, who has reviewed your spreadsheet, when the revisions were made, and how the revisions fit together. NextPage makes it easy to see where the document has been and what revisions have been made, eliminating the confusion of who did what and when it was done.

What advantages does NextPage have?

The major advantages to using NextPage’s collaboration software include

the following:

• Do NOT need a centralized server

• Do NOT need an IT infrastructure

• Installation can be done in a matter of minutes

• Will work with associates who are NOT NextPage subscribers

• Solves document management problems where they originate

If your company is getting lost in the mess of documents then you can benefit greatly by implementing a collaboration software solution. Solutions from Documentum or NextPage will enhance your overall organization and productivity. In this article I have got the ball rolling for you. All you need to do now is to see what solution will best fit your company. So get out there and get your company documents organized!

Mike Nielsen is a client account specialist with 10xmarketing - More Visitors. More Buyers. More Revenue. For more information about Documentum, visit NextPage.com

Microsoft Great Plains is main accounting / ERP application from Microsoft Business Solutions, targeted to the US market. It serves the whole of vertical and horizontal market: most of the industries and company sizes. Crystal Reports on the other hand is the leader in the reporting software industry and Microsoft is willing to use Crystal as main reporting tool for Great Plains, Solomon, Microsoft CRM, .Net platform, etc.

If you are developer who is asked: how do we extend Great Plains ReportWriter with somewhat more sophisticated - read this and you will have the clues on where to look further.

1. Great Plains Tables Structure - first of all you need to know the tables to link. Launch Great Plains and go to Tools->Resource Description->Tables. Find the table in the proper series. If you are looking for the customers - it should be RM00101 - customer master file. If you need historical Sales Order Processing documents - they are in SOP30200 - Sales History Header file, etc.
   
2. Create ODBC connection to GP Company database. Use the same technique as when you create standard ODBC connection for GP workstation - but change default database to targeted company database.
   
3. Consider SQL Views - if you don’t want complex links in Crystal Report itself or if you need unionization from several companies - SQL view is the answer.
   
4. Consider SQL Stored Procedures. Sometimes you can not pull the data in one view - you need temporary tables to be created and the final query should be based on these temp tables - this is when you need stored procedure.
   
5. Call Crystal Report from GP Screens via VBA/Modifier - if the user wants to call Crystal report for example - printing Invoices in GP and do it from SOP Entry window - you can use Modifier and VBA to call Crystal Reports engine.
   
6. Create SQL Query to probe the data - we always recommend tuning your query and see that you are getting adequate results - in any case - Crystal Report is just a nice tool to show the results of your query.

Happy customizing, querying and designing! if you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies - USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, based in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Boston, New York, Houston, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Seattle and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

There are many variants of Linux used in different computer systems today. Luckily, most Linux developers employ a common naming and utilization scheme that makes different variants of Linux easy to use and maintain. This article will discuss some important and common directories in many popular Linux distributions.

/home
Each user of a Linux system is assigned a special directory, called “home” direectory, that represents their private space on the system. For example, if a user of the system is called tom, the home directory of tom will be /home/tom. Tom has the right to create any files and directories under his home directory. This is also the default location when tom logs into the system.

/root
This is the home directory of the adminstrator or super user.

/tmp
In addition to personal hard disk space in the home directories, users are also given special access to shared temporary space in the /tmp directory. Linux systems often implement quotas on user accounts to prevent anyone from using too much disk space. The /tmp directory allows all users access to additional space to meet short term needs without charging the space against their quota. All files placed in this directory are deleted automatically after a few days.

/etc
This directory stores all the configuration files needed for the operating system. For example, startup configuration scripts are found in /etc/rc.d and network configuration scripts are found in /etc/sysconfig. Normal users cannot modify the files in /etc.

/bin and /usr/bin
Most system commands are stored as binary files only in machine readable format. Commands appropriate for use by ordinary users are either placed in the /bin or /usr/bin directory. Core commands like rm, mv, ls, cd go into /bin while supplementary utilities like compilers, firefox browser and openoffice go into /usr/bin.

/sbin and /usr/sbin
Like /bin and /usr/bin, /sbin and /usr/sbin store commands to be used only by the super user, ie root user. These include commands for attaching and removing hardware, starting and stopping the system…etc.

/var
This directory stores all the frequently changed files in the system. For example, incoming, outgoing mails, system logs, websites, ftp file archives…etc. very

Conlcusion
There are only a few directories to know to really start using Linux. If you understand what the main directories are, then exploring the sub-direectories becomes much easier. If you are lost while navigating the directories, always use “cd /” to return back the the root, “cd ..” to go up one level or use “pwd” to find out where you are. Another command “which xxx” tells you where certain commands are located.

Bernard Peh is a great passioner of web technologies and one of the co-founders of Sitecritic.net Site Reviews. He works with experienced web designers and developers for more than 5 years, developing and designing commercial and non-commercial websites. During his free time, he does website reviews, freelance SEO and PHP work.