Movin' Up

As most of you are using PCs, you know that they excel at allowing you to make inexpensive upgrades that can really extend the life of the computers. Here are The Best, Cheapest Ways to Upgrade Your PC.

ET Phone Home

As most of us are constantly connected, the choice of your smartphone is pretty critical. The two major players are the iPhone and the Android. Having trouble deciding? Check out this comparison.

Shopaholics

Many dental practices that I work with have started to allow patients to purchase products online. Don't know how to set that up? Here are the Five Best Places to Set Up Shop Online.

Thinking Outside the Box

One thing that may have dissuaded you from using Box.net in the past is its lack of a Dropbox-like desktop sync program. That's finally changed, with Box introducing a Windows app that creates a My Box Files folder and keeps it synced to your cloud storage.

Dropbox still has the edge, of course, with its app also available for Mac and Linux users. Box.net assures us that a Mac version is on the way in a few months, but I couldn't find word of any Linux plans. Box.net does have loads of cool plug-in OpenBox services though, which are well worth investigating if you're considering a cloud sync/storage account.

Imagine That

If you deal with images on a regular basis (and who of us doesn't?), then you know how crappy the image viewer that comes with Windows is. Enter FastStone Image Viewer...a FAR better option for managing your images. It's a fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. It has a nice array of features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping and color adjustments.

Silky Soft

One of the biggest challenges for offices with digital x-ray is finding the right ways to position the sensors. One system that I've been playing with recently is SoftX, which is a soft bitewing tab. They are easy on the sensors, secure, and comfortable for the patient. Definitely worth a try.

Movin' on Up

Spokane — June 8, 2010 — Today in the first Mobile Dental Rx Deployment and Development press release, Brent Hull announced immediate availability of Mobile Dental Rx. Mobile Dental Rx, is a free crown and bridge prescription application for BlackBerry® smartphones, used in the dental practice for making dental prescriptions, to enable digital communication between the dental practice and dental laboratory. Brent also announced that just six months after thorough testing began, Mobile Dental Rx is ready for BlackBerry® smartphones in the US. Research shows that the technology in the dental industry has increased, and Mobile Dental Rx will enhance the chair side experience.

Mobile Dental Rx Availability

“I’m pleased to offer Mobile Dental Rx as a free service to the dental community. My commitment to providing new technologies on the mobile platform will continue for a long time to come,” Brent Hull. This product is available with convenient installation at http://www.mobiledentrx.com/products.html.

Founded in 2009, Mobile Dental Rx is a new product for dental communication.

Arc of Angels

I've always been a fan of small keyboards in the operatories. While I've recommended Gyration keyboards in the past, the new Microsoft Arc is around the same size but at a lower price point. Definitely worth checking out.

Third is a Charm

At first glance you might confuse 3x3 with other minimalist start pages—it certainly shares the "click the grid of icons" styling shared by many. Underneath, it's packed with features: keyboard shortcuts, folder-based organization, and even an accompanying Android app.

3x3links lays out nine of your favorite shortcuts in a grid. Not too exciting so far, right? Where 3x3links shines is a folder-based system of organization, you can subdivide your grid into all folders, a mix of links and folders, or just links—a folder for your favorite news sites, social networking sites, search engines, or whatever else you want on the front page but not cluttering everything up.

Getting Along

If you use Gmail as your email backend but prefer a good old-fashioned desktop email client for handling your day-to-day email, you're probably aware that many clients—like Outlook—don't play that nice with Gmail. Here's how to fix that.

Still Has a Pulse

Sometimes you may want to know what's going on with your disk at a given moment. Maybe you're just curious that way, or maybe you're trying to troubleshoot a problem or detect whether or not there's a keylogger on your PC.

For those times, DiskPulse can come in very handy. There are three versions of the software: Free, Pro and Ultimate.

By default, you get a flood of file changes from all over the system when you start monitoring. It's very easy to narrow down on exactly what you're interested in, though. You can set it to log only certain events (file creation but not modification, for example) or monitor only specific folders and not the whole disk.

The Ol' Switcheroo

Here's something that I think will be of great benefit to dental offices that use a laser printer for their documents but a photo printer for digital images:

Freeware utility Automatic Printer Switcher maps different default printers to different programs, so you can skip the step of switching to the printer you want every time you print from a different application.

The idea behind the app is pretty simple: Let's say you've got a laser printer that you generally print Word documents to, and a color printer where you generally send your photos for printing. Just map your programs to the printer you will more often than not use it with, and Automatic Printer Switcher will monitor active windows and swap the default printer depending on what application you're printing from. Cool!

New and Improved

If you're on Facebook (and most of you know I am!), then you know they've taken a lot of heat lately for their inattention to privacy details. They announced a complete overhaul recently of this. Here's a Guide to Facebook's New, Simpler Privacy Controls.

Room With a View

If you've longed to organize your pictures as though sliding and grouping them on a desk, Viewer2 is a novel take on picture organization that feels more like real-world sorting and shuffling and less like computer-based cataloging.

Once you load your photo directories, your images are displayed on a virtual desktop. There you can drag them around, group them, tag them, and interact with them as though they were in a physical space—pushing one group through a larger group, bumping a smaller group out of the way, and more.

You can select images for individual tagging, Ctrl+Click to grab a group of them, or use a lasso-grab with your mouse cursor. You can slap new tags on an image or use the drop-down menu to reuse existing tags. Viewer2 is freeware, Windows only.

Differential Diagnosis

If you have computers, then you know how tough it can be to try to figure out what is happening when something isn't right. Here are the Five Best Computer Diagnostic Tools.

Ahead of the Curve

One of my favorite programs, Curve Dental, has just been honored with a significant award. Here's the news;


Curve Dental Receives Best of Class Technology Award
Consulting Firm, Pride Institute, Adds Curve Dental to List of Winners in the Emerging Technologies Class

OREM, UT—Curve Dental, developers of Web-based dental software announced the
company was one of thirteen companies to receive the Pride Institute’s Best of Class
Technology Award for 2010. Curve Dental was a winner in the emerging technology
class.

“We’re honored to have been selected by the Pride Institute and recognized for the
accomplishments we have made in dental software,” said Jim Pack, CEO of Curve
Dental. “We like nothing more than to create web-based tools that improve productivity, are more flexible to the doctor’s lifestyle and much more convenient. A web-based platform lets us think outside the box and deliver on our promise to provide a fresh alternative to dental software. And as a result, doctors every day are choosing Curve Dental over traditional software because they see us as a solution with less stress and more freedom. Pride Institute’s acknowledgment of what we are bringing to dentistry is a major achievement for Curve Dental.”

A panel of dental technology experts, organized by the Pride Institute, a dental practice management consulting firm based in Novato, California, placed Curve Dental on the list of winners in the emerging technologies class. The winning companies and their products were chosen through an unbiased, rigorous assessment selection process in conjunction with a distinguished panel of known technology experts. The winning technologies were selected by majority vote and divided into four categories: Foundational, Diagnostic, Therapeutic, and Emerging.
The Pride Institute Best of Class Technology awards were launched in 2009 as a new
concept to provide an unbiased, non-profit assessment of available technologies in the dental space. Winners of the award are invited to participate in a technology fair showcased at the American Dental Association’s annual meeting. “We deeply felt a gap in the area of technology education and integration, said Lou Shuman, DMD, CAGS, President of the Pride Institute. “We feel the technology awards and fair were an ideal model to fill that gap. Pride Institute’s commitment is to provide the finest information and counsel in all areas of practice management.”

The panel consists of seven dentists with significant knowledge of and experience in
dental technology, including Dr. Shuman; John Flucke, DDS, writer, speaker and
Technology Editor for Dental Products Report; Paul Child, DMD, CDT, CEO of
Clinician’s Report; Titus Schleyer, DMD, PhD, Associate Professor and Director, Center for Dental Informatics at the University of Pittsburg, School of Dental Medicine; Marty Jablow, DMD, technology writer and speaker; Para Kachalia, DDS, Assistant Professor of Restorative Dentsitry at the University of the Pacific, School of Dentistry; and Larry Emmott, DDS, technology writer, speaker and dental marketing consulting. “I feel very fortunate that a panel of this magnitude has agreed to contribute to the selection process,” said Dr. Shuman.

About Curve Dental, Inc.

Founded in 2005, Curve Dental provides web-based dental software and related services to dental practices within the United States and Canada. The company is privately-held, headquartered in Orem, Utah with offices in Calgary, Canada and Dunedin, New Zealand. Dentists can call 888-910-4376 or visit www.curvedental.com for more information.

Return to Sender

In today's day and age, transferring files is a pain in the rear. Sure, there's email or instant messenger if you want to transfer a single file from A to B -- but what if there's an attachment size limit on your email, or a firewall preventing you from sending files? What if you want to transfer whole directories? It's certainly possible but it's painful.

Then there's FTP, an ancient technology that can be secure and usually supports the resuming of transfers. But it still has some big issues -- can you imagine walking your grandmother through an FTP transfer? FTP dumps are rarely monitored or policed either. If multiple clients upload to the same FTP server, it's not uncommon for them to be able to access each other's files -- and those uploaded files are rarely cleaned up, sometimes lingering for years.

The thing is, while they're both 30 to 40 years old, email and FTP do work. But wouldn't it be great if there was a better solution? I've often wondered the same thing -- and now I can tell you there is.

Enter Web-based file transfer and sharing tools. RapidShare is one example, WeTransfer is another -- but leading the pack with ten times the features, better support and a plethora of awesome shiny bits is YouSendIt.

Batten Down the Hatches

Many of you will find that you are frequently downloading multiple files at the same time. Assuming you're a Firefox user, you should definitely consider an add-on call Down Them All, which is a great download manager to help you download multiple files simultaneously.

Lost and Found

One of the passwords I'm constantly forgetting is the one for my various routers. RouterPassView is a free program that can find the password and other info if you've managed to forget it.

A Quick Solut-ion

Anyone who boots up Windows computers on a regular basis knows how frustrating it can be, especially when boot times are measured in minutes, not seconds. Enter Soluto. After performing a somewhat lengthy initial scan of the software installed on your system and first-run boot analysis, Soluto displays startup items in three categories: no-brainers, potentially removable (recommended for more advanced users), and required. Pick a program, view its description, see how much time it adds to your boot process, and decide whether you'd like to pause or delay it to help speed things up.

Soluto will even tell you what other users chose to do with a specific program -- as long as someone else has tinkered with it already. Very slick.

Mr. FixIt

Does your Recycle Bin not refresh correctly? Or maybe you find that for some reason your right click context menu has been disabled in Internet Explorer! Or perhaps things are not fine with your Windows Media Center and you need to flush & rebuild Windows Media Center database! Maybe you opted to be not-warned while deleting Sticky Notes and you now want the warning dialog box back! Or then perhaps, post a malware attack you find that your task manage or cmd or your Registry Editor has been disabled! Fixes for these and many more such common Windows problems are found in a great little utility called FixWin...check it out.

Tweaker

While Windows 7 has some great features out of the box, there's no doubt that it could always use a little help from third-party programs to get it to the next level. Here are the Five Best Windows 7 Tweaking Applications.

Five for Fighting

You can find hundreds of sites online that talk about all the little tips and tweaks for power users of Windows 7. What about the rest of us, though, the average user? Here are Five Windows 7 Features Average Users Should Know About.

Return to Sender

If all you want to do is share a file with a friend or colleague, here's a super simple system to do it: iSendr. You choose the file, decide whether to password protect it, and then the recipient can log in to get it. Simple and free and works great.

The Hostess with the Mostess

While I've mentioned many web site design companies in the past, there's no doubt that one often overlooked service is web site hosting, as the prices can range quite a bit as well as the features. If you're unsure about which company to use, click on over to WhoIsHostingThis, which reviews all the major hosts as well as let's you find the best one based on criteria you provide.

Freefall

There are tons of great free programs on the web. Sometimes, you can even pick up programs that normally cost something for free. A great utility for cleaning up your computer, Advanced System Care, which is normally sold for around $30, can be downloaded for free, but this week only. You can't get tech support from them, but what do you expect for free?

Bookworm

The web—and web browsers—evolve extremely quickly, but if there's one web browsing feature that's stood the test of time, it's browser bookmarks. Manage your bookmarks effectively and efficiently with one of these five bookmark management tools.

Face the Music

Facebook has added a new security feature that will send you an email or SMS when someone logs in to your account from a computer that Facebook doesn't recognize. It takes a little bit of work to set up, but it could be a very clever line of defense against Facebook hackers or "friends" who might have gotten your password somehow.

To turn this feature on, go to Account Settings and find Account Security near the bottom. Click "change," and set this option to "yes." To register your machines, you'll need to log out and log back in. Doing so should bring up the registration prompt, where you'll name your machine and get a cookie from Facebook that will let it recognize your computer as yours in the future.

XP for Me

Windows 7's built-in virtualization tools let you do all kinds of useful things -- from multi-booting using virtual hard disks (VHDs), to mounting those same VHDs as local disks, to running older software that doesn't play well with OSes newer than XP. It would, however, be nice if certain tasks were a bit simpler.

Fortunately there are some great, free tools which can help.

Suite Music to My Ears

Here's a press releases for the newest version of Caesy, Enterprise Suite 9:

ST. PAUL, Minn. – (April 28, 2010) – Patterson Dental Supply, Inc. introduces CAESY Enterprise Suite 9, the newest version of its server-based patient education software for both operatories and the reception area. With 70 new and updated topics, CAESY Enterprise Suite 9 brings dental offices the highest quality patient education system on the market, delivering new live-action video, fresh 3D animations and superior software navigation.

Among the new presentations, CAESY 9 offers content on panoramic digital x-rays, as well as caries ID technology. Additionally, five new presentations in the Periodontal Disease section cover medications, esthetic crown lengthening, free gingival graft, sinus lift and sub-epithelial gingival graft. Smile Channel offerings have been added, with new Smile Styles videos, as well as Did You Know? and Tech Minute presentations which aim to not only educate, but entertain patients.

Fifty-four updated presentations keep CAESY Enterprise current with dental technology and procedures, matching the high-tech atmosphere of today’s dental practices. CAESY 9’s completely updated esthetics section incorporates the latest smile restoration capabilities, and presentations like CEREC CAD/CAM have been refreshed to include the newest developments with today’s office technologies.
CAESY Enterprise is the most complete dental patient education solution, with more than 280 multimedia presentations and three full-featured software products. The system includes CAESY presentations, which optimize staff time, eliminate the fatigue of repeating explanations, and increase case acceptance rates; Smile Channel, the reception area and operatory program; and ShowCase, which allows doctors and their staff to create custom CDs with CAESY and Smile Channel multimedia presentations. Designed for use throughout the practice, CAESY Enterprise will help reinforce treatment recommendations and prompt interest in discretionary services.
All CAESY presentations are also available in Spanish, and CAESY Enterprise Suite 9 works seamlessly with Windows Vista and XP operating systems.

CAESY Education Systems has been dentistry’s premier developer of leading-edge patient education technology and content since 1993. CAESY was acquired by Patterson Dental Supply, Inc. in May 2004. The award-winning multimedia information on preventive, restorative and esthetic treatment options helps dental practices worldwide educate their patients and grow their practices. The CAESY content is distributed via video and computer networks or DVD players throughout the clinical and reception areas of the dental practice. The family of products includes CAESY DVD, Smile Channel DVD, and CAESY Enterprise, which includes CAESY, Smile Channel and ShowCase. For more information, visit www.caesy.com or call 1-800-294-8504.