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PALO ALTO, Calif.--It looks and feels like a square, yellow crayon.

But it's actually a lot more sophisticated than that. It's ink in solid form (aptly called "solid ink") made of a polymeric resin, and Xerox researchers are using it, combined with advances in print head technology to make a greener printer.

Solid ink before it is melted and jetted onto paper in a printer.

(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)

Solid ink is different from what's used in the average desktop printer. Instead of buying cartridges filled with liquid ink, which are inserted into small print heads that race back and forth to transfer an image to paper, solid ink is melted, then dripped into a single drum that's as wide as a regular sheet of paper.

The image is then transferred with heat and pressure to paper. It takes about 10 revolutions of the drum to transfer the image, which is then hardened and ejected from the printer.

So how is it greener? Liquid ink requires a lot more packaging--the cartridge and the box it comes in. Xerox says solid ink outputs 90 percent less waste than liquid ink, and saves up to 260 pounds of discarded cartridges and their packaging over the life of a single desktop printer.

It also doesn't require any water or solvent to dry the ink. It does, however, require more energy to heat thick ink to melt it. (The melting point is between 70 degrees and 100 degrees Celsius.) Xerox says it continues to tinker with insulation and the ink's melting point to squeeze more energy efficiency out of every solid ink printer.

Another way researchers are looking to improve the tech's green cred is through the print heads themselves.

Smaller, modular print heads distribute melted solid ink.

(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)

By making the print head smaller than the standard 8.5-inch-wide one used in solid ink printing, the new modular print heads can scale to fit multiple kinds of printers using different ink and different media. Xerox says it can output 300 dpi (dots per inch) and the cost of each drop is improved greatly. Despite the improvements, new print heads do mean needing to buy a new printer to take advantage of the technology.

Xerox says this will be available in consumer desktop printers within a year.

Tuesday, I described how to convert the outline of a Word document into a Powerpoint presentation automatically. I stated that this feature was missing in Word 2007, but Tim Anderson explained in his ITWriting blog that the function was still there, though you had to dig a little to find it: Click the Office icon in the top-left corner, choose Word Options at the bottom of the dialog, click Customize in the left pane, select All Commands in the Choose Commands From drop-down menu, scroll to and select Send to Microsoft Office Powerpoint, and click Add to place this option in Word's Quick Access toolbar, which appears just to the right of the Office icon.

That got me thinking about the other useful features that Word makes difficult to find. Here are five neat tricks in Word 2003 and 2007 that you may not know about.

1: Keep your paragraphs together
Too often Word breaks pages in exactly the wrong place, making printouts of your documents difficult to read. The Paragraph dialog box gives you more control over the appearance of your printouts. To open it in Word 2003, click anywhere in the paragraph and choose Format>Paragraph; in Word 2007, click the small arrow in the bottom-right corner of the Paragraph section under the ribbon's Home tab. In both versions, check Keep with next (which is selected by default in Word 2003), and Keep lines together, which prevents a paragraph from being split between two pages. If you'd like a paragraph to begin a page, check Page break before.

Control the appearance of your printed documents by selecting these options under the Line and Page Breaks tab in Microsoft Word's Paragraph dialog box.

2: Change a document's date automatically
I frequently reuse the same Word file, changing only the date and one or two other items. It's simple enough to select the old date and start typing the new one until Word's auto-fill feature kicks in to display the current date, which it adds when I press Enter. Now I save myself even those few keystrokes by using a Date and Time field set to the current date: Place the cursor where you want the date to appear, and in Word 2003, click Insert>Field. In Word 2007, choose the Insert tab and click Date & Time. In Word 2003, click Date in the Field names window. In both versions, choose your preferred date format. In Word 2007, check Update automatically. Finally, click OK.

Add the current date to your documents in Word 2003 via the Date and Time options in the Field dialog box.

3: Fit more text on a single page
In addition to the file backups you create yourself, Word keeps backups of the files you've opened recently by default. Still, there may be times when you want to print an archival copy of a lengthy Word document. Save paper by reformatting the document to fit more text per page.

Start by pressing Ctrl-A to select the entire file, and then in Word 2003, click Format>Font. In Word 2007, click the small arrow in the bottom-right corner of the Font section under the Home tab. Choose a smaller font size, though keep in mind that anything smaller than 6 points will be difficult to read without a magnifying glass.

Next, make the margins smaller by clicking File>Page Setup in Word 2003, or Page Layout>Margins>Custom Margins in Word 2007. Change the Top, Bottom, Left, and Right settings in Word 2007 to .16", and in Word 2003, set Outside to 0.07", Inside to 0.5", Left to 0.25", and Right to 0.25". These are the smallest you can have while fitting all text on the printout.

4: Print on two sides of the paper
You can print on both sides of the paper even if your printer doesn't support duplex printing by default, though you may have to flip and collate the paper yourself. In Word 2003, click File>Print; in Word 2007, click the Office icon and choose Print. If you see a "Manual duplex" option, select it and click OK. After the first side prints, you'll be prompted to place the paper back into the input bin, blank side up. Do so and click OK again to print the second side.

If you don't have a Manual duplex option in your printer settings, you can achieve the same effect by choosing Odd pages in the Print drop-down menu, then flip and collate the pages, return them to the paper tray, and click Even pages. Your printer may also have an option to print more than one page per sheet, though this option may render the text unreadable, so test it on a sample page before using it to print a long file.

5: Place an object on its own page
Suppose you have an Excel worksheet you want to place on its own page in the middle of a Word document, and you want the page to print in landscape orientation while the rest of the document is in portrait mode. Piece of cake!

Place the cursor where you want the new page to begin, and click Insert>Break>Next page>OK in Word 2003, or Insert>Page Break in Word 2007. Copy and paste the worksheet into the Word file, and repeat the steps to create another page break at the end of it. Now select the page, and in Word 2003, click File>Page Setup>Margins>Landscape; in Word 2007, choose Page Layout>Orientation>Landscape.

Last week I described how to use a simple Javascript to determine the age of a Web page. The only problem: if the page has any dynamic elements that update automatically when the page loads (and these days most Web pages do), the script shows the current time and date.

For pages without auto-update content, type javascript:alert(document.lastModified) into the address bar and press Enter to see a window pop-up with the date and time of the page's last update. I'm still looking for a way to find out how recently specific content on a Web page was updated.

As I was looking for such a method, I stumbled upon a great Firefox add-in from Chris Pedericks called the Web Developer Toolbar (download). As the name implies, the free toolbar is intended to help Web designers test their pages, but it can also be used to show only the text of Web pages, which often makes them easier to read--and to print out.

After you download the toolbar, click Options and check Persist Features. Next, click CSS*Disable Styles*All Styles. Now click Images*Disable Image*All Images. Lastly, click Disable*Disable JavaScript*All JavaScript. You'll see only the page's text, and perhaps a couple of broken-image place markers. Be warned, however, that the results are rarely pretty.

In addition to making the pages easier to print, the text-only versions are also much easier to scan for specific information. (Note that you can retain much of the page's original formatting--minus images--by keeping CSS enabled.)

Tomorrow: Put Microsoft Word's styles to good use.

Everyone wants to be a designer. That's the value proposition of JuJups.com, a new online service claiming it will allow consumers to design their own personalized and customized 3D content. 3D printing, as the underlying technology is called, is a form of rapid prototyping that builds up three-dimensional objects by "printing" successive layers of materials (polymer, cells, sugar, etc.) on top of each other.

(Credit: George Hart)

As a recent Wired story points out, 3D-printing technology has been around for a while, mostly used by professional design firms and design-intensive businesses such as automakers, handset makers, and aerospace companies. Recent advancements have enabled the technology to "print out" fully functional finished products, leading to a remarkable boom in equipment sales: according to market research firm Wohlers Associates, 8,000 machines, or 36 percent of the industry's two-decade worldwide sales total of 22,000, have been sold in the past two years alone.

Multi-material 3D printers, capable of producing 3D parts and assemblies made from different materials in a single build, are hitting the market, and companies like Freedom of Creation (FOC) are paving the way for making rapid manufacturing technologies accessible for consumers.

In addition, a steady drop in the price of printers has spawned many new businesses trying to push 3D printing into the consumer market: 3D Outlook Corporation is selling 3D models of mountains and other topographic 3D maps for prices below $100, catering to hikers, resorts, and real estate firms.

Companies such as Fabjectory and FigurePrints produce 3D models of virtual characters (from virtual worlds or games). SolidWorks, a U.S. unit of Dassault Systemes SA, a French maker of design software, has launched Cosmic Modelz, a site that lets kids use 3D printing technology to create their own customized action-figures. And now JuJups wants to step aggressively into the emerging market with a Web-based 3D-printing service for everyone.

The JuJups site, however, currently only offers customized designs of photo frames, which it then prints out on 3D color printing machines and ships to customers. Although the company says it plans to expand its printing capacity to support the growing demand for customized objects including giftware, memorabilia, toys, etc., it is a little odd that it put out a bold announcement (for immediate release) of an offering that is apparently not quite ready for prime time at this point.

The JuJups example shows that there's still a gap between hype and reality when it comes to 3D printing for consumers. Trendwatching, and other trend-spotting media (Times Online, Post-Gazette, Make) have long propagated "MIY" (make it yourself) culture as a key trend.

Terry Wohlers, president of Wohlers Associates, says 3D printing is the fastest-growing part of the rapid prototyping industry. Wired believes it is witnessing a design revolution. Earlier this year, Glen Emerson Morris, a technology consultant, predicted in the Advertising and Marketing Review that 3D printing (or desktop manufacturing, as he calls it) would hit the consumer market big time: "It will likely have an impact on society, politics, and business as great or greater than the Internet. So, fasten your seatbelts. This is going to be a really wild ride."

Morris argued that "one of the reasons consumer use of home 3D printing, better described as desktop manufacturing, is likely to take off quickly is that there is very little manufacturing being done in America anymore. As a result, there will be very little pressure by manufacturing special interests against it."

And yet, we're still sitting here with our seatbelts fastened--but the wild ride has yet to occur. Aside from the above-mentioned niche sites, the big mainstream push from Generation C (C = content) to Generation 3D has been lost somewhere along the way. When will big retailers start to add 3D printing features to their sites? Where are the powerful brands or smart start-ups embracing the model? When will see the YouTube of 3D printing?

Printing documents and tossing them out almost immediately is a common ritual in the workplace--one that's not so environmentally friendly. According to a recent study by Xerox, as much as 40 percent of what's printed in an office is thrown away or into the recycling bin on a daily basis. And if it's pitched to a blue bin, it still takes energy to recycle that paper.

Xerox, of course, has a technology solution to the problem. In recent months, the printing company came out with a "green" paper that promises to cut the environmental footprint of traditional paper-making methods. Xerox's paper, called Xerox high yield business paper, uses half as many trees as regular paper and requires less water, chemicals and fuel to produce. The printed matter is also 10 percent lighter than typical papers. It's designed for the high-volume printing like in newspaper publishing, but it's not for archiving. The pages will turn yellow over time.

Still, in an interview with Xerox CTO Sophie Vandebroek on Wednesday, it would seem that people need to get over their love of paper first. No shocker, Xerox found in its study that people like the touch and feel of freshly printed pulp.

The lives of office file clerks may get a little easier if Xerox delivers on its promise of new smart-paper technology.

Researchers from the company's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) on Thursday announced three new technologies that augment digital and paper documents.

First is the hybrid categorizer, software that uses computer vision and other machine learning techniques to understand text and general images on a digital page. Then it links the text and images so the document can be categorized. For example, an insurance company could use the software to digitally file a document containing an image of a car into an auto claims folder, vs. one for home claims. The software would automatically complete the task without the help of a file clerk.

The second in Xerox's software cadre deals with mining pages for sensitive information. The technology, called "intelligent redaction," is a content detection tool that can encrypt sensitive sections or paragraphs of a digital document, or it can automatically remove confidential data from the page. For example, if a hospital needs to send a patient's medical folder to another doctor as part of a legal case, the technology could encrypt the information about the patient that needs to remain private.

Continuing on the spy movie theme, Xerox also announced a new security feature for paper documents. Its so-called infrared specialty printing technology lets customers create and embed a hologram onto a physical piece of paper to prevent copying. An infrared light source can authenticate the document by revealing its hidden text. Xerox CTO Sophie Vandebroek said the technology could be used for birth certificates, store coupons and movie tickets.

"There's an amazing opportunity to leverage these technology across many markets," Vandebroek said.

Printing has long been one of Hewlett-Packard's most reliable businesses, but recent moves show the company is trying to adapt to the very mobile and Web-centric world of documents.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-PC maker laid out its new plan to focus on the intersection of printing and the Web at an event last week in New York. After the glut of announcements regarding its new Printing 2.0 campaign, HP said Tuesday it has chosen someone to lead a new unit devoted to this effort.

David Murphy, 45, has been appointed senior vice president of the newly formed Web Services and Software unit within HP's Imaging and Printing Group. Murphy was formerly the chief financial officer at Mercury Interactive, the management software company purchased last year by HP for $4.5 billion.

Murphy will oversee all Web services and software groups within IPG, which is largely made up of small private companies cherry-picked by HP over the last two years: online photo service Snapfish (acquired in 2005), Web-based printing software Tabblo (acquired in March), online design service company Logoworks (acquired in April).

Apple has acquired the source code for CUPS, an open-source project for managing printing on Unix and Linux systems.

Michael Sweet, CUPS author and an owner of the company Easy Software Products that owned the CUPS software copyright, said last week that Apple hired him and acquired the copyright in February.

CUPS, which stands for the Common Unix Printing System, will continue to be released under the General Public License (GPL) and Lesser GPL (LGPL) licensing terms. However, Apple has an exception from the terms of the license.

"Software that is developed by any person or entity for an Apple Operating System...that is linked to the CUPS imaging library or based on any sample filters or backends provided with CUPS shall not be considered to be a derivative work or collective work based on the CUPS program and is exempt from the mandatory source code release clauses of the GNU GPL," according to the CUPS list of frequently asked questions. "This exception is only available for Apple OS-Developed Software and does not apply to software that is distributed for use on other operating systems."