Dollar Falls Most Against Euro in Month on Sentiment, Crude Oil

May 16 - The dollar fell the most against the euro in a month and depreciated versus the yen as a drop in consumer confidence and a surge in crude oil to a record increased concern U.S. economic growth will slow.

The currency dropped for the first time in four days against the euro and was down versus most of its major counterparts. The Australian dollar touched a 24-year high against the greenback as crude oil pushed prices of other commodities up.

``The dollar is under pressure,'' said Hidetoshi Yanagihara, senior currency trader at Mizuho Corporate Bank in New York. ``Higher commodity prices are affecting consumer confidence, casting a shadow on the economy.''

The dollar decreased 1 percent to $1.5594 per euro at 4:27 p.m. in New York, from $1.5448 yesterday. It earlier broke through $1.56 for the first time since May 1. The U.S. currency dropped 0.7 percent to 103.96 yen, from 104.74. The euro advanced 0.2 percent to 162.13 yen, from 161.79 yesterday.

The U.S. currency, which has risen 3 percent from a record low of $1.6019 against the euro on April 22, is down 0.7 percent this week, its second straight decline. The yen has fallen 1.8 percent against the euro, the biggest drop since mid-April. It's down 1 percent versus the dollar this week.

Crude oil rallied to the all-time high of $127.82 a barrel, leading commodities higher, as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. raised its forecast for the second half of this year to an average of $141 a barrel, citing supply constraints.

Euro Correlation

The correlation coefficient between oil and the euro-dollar exchange rate has been 0.95 for the past year, indicating they have moved in the same direction 95 percent of the time. The correlation is calculated based on the price changes of oil and the currencies.

The Australian dollar increased as much as 1.7 percent to 95.60 U.S. cents, the highest level since 1984, on higher commodity prices. Exports of raw materials, such as iron ore, account for 17 percent of Australia's economy.

Canada's dollar was little changed after touching 99.43 cents per U.S. dollar, the strongest since March 19. The currency has traded near parity with its U.S. counterpart this year after climbing 17 percent in 2007. Commodities such as oil account for about half of Canada's exports.

The dollar dropped as much as 0.8 percent to the nine-year low of 1.6409 versus the Brazilian real and fell as much as 1.6 percent to 5.0131 against the Norwegian krone, the weakest since April 24. Norway is the world's fifth-largest oil producer, while the real has gained 19 percent in the past 12 months, buoyed by a surge in exports of sugar and iron ore.

`All About Oil'

``Today it's all about oil,'' said Alan Kabbani, senior currency trader at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Iceland's krona was the best performer against the dollar among emerging-market currencies, increasing 4.6 percent to 74.32 after the central banks of Denmark, Sweden and Norway pledged as much as 1.5 billion euros ($2.3 billion) in emergency funds. The krona jumped 3.7 percent to 115.88 per euro. Before today, it had slumped 24 percent against the euro this year.

The dollar weakened as a report showed confidence among U.S. consumers fell in May to the lowest level in almost 28 years. The Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index dropped to 59.5 this month, from 62.6 in April. The median forecast of 65 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a reading of 62.

The U.S. Dollar Index traded on ICE futures in New York, tracking the dollar against the currencies of six major counterparts, fell 0.8 percent to 72.792, the lowest since May 1. It dropped to a record of 70.698 on March 17.

Fed Rate Outlook

Futures on the Chicago Board of Trade show 88 percent odds that the Fed will hold the target lending rate at 2 percent at its next meeting on June 25. The balance of bets is for a reduction of a quarter-percentage point. There's a 21 percent chance of an increase to 2.25 percent in September.

The euro rose earlier against the dollar as European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said the bank can't relax in its fight against inflation.

``There is no place for complacency,'' Trichet said in a speech in Brussels today. ``Price stability in the medium term has to be'' ensured. It's ``a necessary condition to sustain economic growth, job creation and social cohesion.''

The ECB has held its main refinancing rate at a six-year high of 4 percent since last June to control inflation, which accelerated to the fastest pace in 16 years in March.

http://www.bloomberg.com

Yahoo Teaming With WPP Grp On Digital Advertising

NEW YORK - Yahoo Inc. said Friday it will team with WPP Group PLC on digital display advertising.

Three of WPP Group's divisions, GroupM, 24/7 Real Media and WPP Digital, will work with the Internet search engine pioneer to give their advertising customers more Web options.

24/7 Real Media, a digital marketing company, will develop a proprietary media trading platform that will connect to Yahoo's Right Media Exchange, an online advertising exchange that links publishers with advertisers.

WPP also plans to create a marketplace with Yahoo that will give its agencies more access to inventory, including that from Yahoo's owned and affiliated networks and 24/7's global Web alliance. Third-party publishers are also expected to have access to the marketplace.

Yahoo, which recently rejected a takeover offer from Microsoft Corp., may now face a possible board shake up, as billionaire Carl Icahn reportedly loads up on the company's stock in preparation for a possible attempt to shove aside its board and bring Microsoft back to the bargaining table.

http://money.cnn.com

How To Add Scrollbars To Blogger

Here I will show you how to create widgets in Blogger and/or boxes with scrollbars. For example, when the content of the widget exceeds the specified height or width, you will have a vertical or horizontal scrollbar, which will enable your readers to read the content, that doesn't fit in the area provided. This scrollbars can be especially useful for link lists or labels, because often they are very long. This way you will save space on your blog, but also provide the full content. So if you want to add scrollbars to your blog, then read on and learn how to customize your template to add scrollbars.

The "overflow" style

“overflow” style property is used to create the scrollbars in CSS or the stylesheet. There some values of "overflow" style, which are described below.

a) overflow:visible

"overflow:visible" the default value. I wouldn't recommend to use this in Blogger, because the extra content is will either be rendered outside the box or the length of the box will be extended to include the extra content.

b) overflow:hidden

overflow:hidden will simply cut off the extra content that overflows and there will be no scrollbars to the box.

c) overflow:scroll

The content is clipped but there will be scrollbars at the sides.

d) overflow:auto

If you use "overflow:auto" the browser will only display a scrollbar when the content doesn't fit into the widget. This is probably the best one to use.

Scrollbar For All Widgets

Ok, now you know how the coding for scrollbars work, you can use it for your blog. If you want you can specify the same height or width for all your widgets. This way your blog will probably will look better, because all the widgets will be the same size.

Important: please download your template, before applying any codes from here to your blog. Just in case if you want to change everything back, so you can easily do it.

Go to your blog's Template, and then Edit HTML. You will have to insert the following coding in under the /* Sidebar Content */ :

/* Sidebar Content */ .sidebar .widget{ height:200px; overflow:auto; }

In this example, the height of the widget is 200 pixels. You can change that to any value you want and modify your widgets as you like.

One Sidebar Widgets Scrollbar

If you don't want to have scrollbars for all your widgets, then you need a different coding. For example, I wouldn't use scrollbars for the sidebar where is Adsense, because it's against Adsense TOS. This is what you need:-

/* Sidebar Content */ #newsidebar .widget{ height:200px; overflow:auto; }

Before applying the changes, preview your and see if it looks like the way you want it to be. Save your template after.

Scrollbar in One Widget only

If you want to add scrollbars to a particular widget you need to know the widget's ID. To get that go to Template > Edit HTML. Somewhere at the bottom in your HTML you will see this:

<div id='sidebar-wrapper'> <b:section class='sidebar' id='sidebar' preferred='yes'> <b:widget id='LinkList1' locked='false' title='General' type='LinkList'/> <b:widget id='HTML1' locked='false' title='' type='HTML'/> <b:widget id='Label1' locked='false' title='Label' type='Label'/> </b:section> </div>

To find the ID of your widget, you need to know what is the widget. For example, if it's a LinkList widget, then look for the type="LinkList", if it's HTML/Javascript then look for type=HTML", etc. As you can see above all the widgets have "widget id" (LinkList1, HTML1, Label1 are just examples of widget IDs). So when you find the widget that you want to add scrollbars to, simply make a note of the ID of that particular widget.

When you have located your widget ID, just put it under /* Sidebar Content */ :

/* Sidebar Content */ #Your Widget ID{ height:200px; overflow:auto; }

Now only that particular widget in your sidebar will have scrollbars, the rest won't be affected.
Remember, you can modify height of the sidebar and overflow type as you like.

Scrollbar in All Widgets except One

You can also add scrollbars to all the Widgets except one. For example, if you do not want to have scrollbars for Adsense widget then you need to do the following.

First add scrollbars to all widgets(I described how to do it above). Then get the ID of the widget that you don't want to have scrollbars.
After you got that, put in under /* Sidebar Content */ and specify height value big enough so that scrollbars don't appear.

/* Sidebar Content */ #Widget ID{ height:600px; }

For example, if you are using Adsense 160x600 Vertical Wide Banner, then 600px as the height of the widget and no scrollbars will appear. You can do the same for any widget you want.

Links and Labels Scrollbars

Very often scrollbars are used for links or labels, because usually they are quite lengthy. So here I will show you how to add scrollbars to links and label widgets only. All you need to do is to find your Link list's or Label's ID and then put it instead of "Your Widget ID" below. You can locate the ID of your widgets in your template's HTML at the bottom (use CTRL+F to make it easier to find):

/* Sidebar Content */ #Your Widget ID ul{ height:200px; overflow:auto; }

Blog Post Scrollbars

If you want to add scrollbars to your blog's posts, then copy the coding in blue to your template's HTML under ".post {" coding:

.post { height:200px; overflow:auto; }

Scrollbar for Long Text

If you have some really long text on your blog, such as Terms & Conditions or Privacy Policy, then scrollbars will be very handful to minimize the text are, but still allow readers to read the content.

Go Template, then Edit HTML, locate /* Sidebar Content */ and paste the following under that:

.scrollingtext { height:200px; width:200px; border:0; overflow:auto; }

Basically, what we have done here is we have set up a coding that "says" to Blogger, if a text is longer/wider than 200px than scrollbars should be automatically added to that particular text. The above example shows the value of height and width as 200px, you can change that to whatever value you want.

When you have typed your blog post in the Post Editor, switch to “Edit HTML” mode and put the following into your post:

<div class="scrollingtext">TEXT</div>

The red bit of the coding has to go before your text and the blue bit has to be at the end of your post.

After you have published your post, you should be able to see the scrollbars in your post.

IAC Looks It Up

IAC's Ask.com is buying Lexico -- the company behind Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com -- months after Answers.com botched its own buyout.

You have to go back to last summer to find Answers on bended knee with a $100 million engagement proposal for Lexico. Like many starry-eyed potential grooms, Answers didn't have the money to complete the ceremony. The company planned a secondary stock offering, but its timing was lousy. Weak market sentiment left Answers with little choice but to cancel the offering. It finally broke things off with Answers three months ago.

We don't know how much IAC is paying for Lexico, but we can be sure that it's not panhandling for the money. Barry Diller's new media giant is clearly on better financial footing than Answers is.

Lexico's websites will also fit right in. Ask.com is repositioning itself this year, by returning to the query-based searches that made the site stand out from more conventional search portals such as those from Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. Ask.com's retro approach will look great with Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com on its arm.

The beauty of Lexico's properties is that 88% of its traffic comes from users who simply type in one of its generic domain names. IAC won't have to pay to acquire natural traffic. Lexico's sites attracted 15.6 million monthly unique users in March, according to market watcher comScore. Traffic has grown by 29% over the past year, three times faster than the global search market.

The trick here will be finding ways to monetize that traffic. Paid search is great -- just ask Google -- but if you're stumped on whether "barrel" has one or two Ls, you're just going to look up the appropriate spelling or glance at the definition and move on. The challenge for IAC will be to turn that traffic into leads for advertisers. You don't need to go to Dictionary.com to look up the meanings of "challenge," "opportunity," and "monetization." You know those already. So does Ask.com. Now let's see whether it knows how to turn words into action.

http://www.fool.com

CBS Makes Internet Push With CNET

Media titan CBS made a major push into the Internet world on Thursday, announcing that it was acquiring CNET Networks, owner of numerous entertainment and information Web sites.

CNET Networks soared 42.4%, or $3.37, to $11.32 in premarket trading in New York, after CBS announced it was buying the company for $11.50 a share, or $1.8 billion. CBS fell 0.6%, to $24.68, in Thursday premarket trading in New York.

The deal values CNET at a 44.6% premium to Wednesday's closing price of $7.95. CBS said that the deal would catapult it into the ranks of the 10 most popular Internet companies in the United States, with around 200 million users worldwide.

"There are very few opportunities to acquire a profitable, growing, well-managed internet company like CNET Networks," said CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves.

San Francisco-based CNET Networks has a stable of entertainment and news Web sites, such as CNET, GameSpot.com and TV.com and has expanded readership into emerging markets such as China. CBS said the acquisition would extend its entertainment, sports, news and information content to a wider international audience. "Together, CBS and CNET Networks will have significant additional exposure to the fastest-growing advertising sector and can accelerate our growth through a number of new content, promotion and advertising initiatives," said Moonves.

On April 29, CBS reported a 14.4% rise in first-quarter profits, though television revenues were dented by Fox 's aggressive push into sports coverage.

http://www.forbes.com