Questions on styling the footer

Hi,

I have two questions. First of all, could someone give me information on styling the footer of the page (not the posts)? Specifically, I want three columns, the first with a search box/rss info and possibly the admin links, the second with some other links, and the third with the copyright info. I'm also not sure once I get the columns how to actually get a search box. I'm pretty good with html/css, and assume I'd just make a table, but I'm not sure where the code for that would go? The Footer:Content box?

Second question, where can I go to edit how the "Powered by Wordpress" etc looks? I don't mind it being there, and love this theme and want to spread the word, but I'd like to either shorten the text, or at least put it on two lines. I looked in the footer.php file, but didn't find the phrase exactly so I'm assuming it must call something that gives that phrase, and I don't know enough about php to figure it out.

Thanks!