Face Time

Back in December Facebook unveiled a significant redesign to user profiles, which now feature a handful of photos at the top of the page, new sections for featuring your family members and best friends, and some other mostly-cosmetic tweaks. On March 10, the site is launching a similar design for ‘Facebook Pages’ — the public profiles used by brands, businesses, and celebrities to communicate with thousands or millions of fans at once.

Nine Inch Nails

The Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate is now available. For all intents and purposes, this means IE9 is feature complete. Small changes might occur, but it's mostly bug stomping from here on out. Here are all of the major new features -- and some of the smaller, less-obvious, but equally neat changes too.

Sum of the Parts

Sumatra -- the lightweight, open source alternative to Adobe Reader -- has just updated to version 1.3 Sumatra now uses libjpeg-turbo for faster rendering of some PDFs and its printing support has been improved. Documents can also be zoomed and rotated using your keyboard via the + and * keys, respectively.

Sumatra 1.3 also sports a handful of interface tweaks and adds support for the forward and back buttons common on more "sophisticated" mice.

The Spoken Word

There's little doubt that using voice is considered the "holy grail" of dental practice management software. Few people know, though, that this is already built into Windows.With Windows 7’s Speech Recognition, it’s easier than you might think.

Microsoft has been working on its voice command steadily over the years. XP introduced it, Vista smoothed it, and 7 has it polished. It’s strangely not advertised as a feature, even though other voice command and speech recognition programs are hundreds of dollars. It may not be as perfect as some of them, but there’s definitely something amazing about vocally telling your computer to do things and it actually working.

Back From the Dead

Have you ever accidentally deleted a photo on your camera, computer, USB drive, or anywhere else? What you might not know is that you can usually restore those pictures—even from your camera's memory stick.

Packing on the Pounds

Windows 7 SP1 was released yesterday for download via Windows Update or direct from Microsoft. Appearing in beta form last year, it's not the smallest of updates, weighing in at up to just under 2GB in size for the full dual disc image, but SP1 brings with it a slew of patches, fixes, and updates, all rolled into one neat and tidy package.

While Windows 7 SP1 doesn't bring any standout features for the consumer, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 does include some important back-end improvements to both performance and security. Highlights include the addition of Dynamic Memory, which enables a higher density of virtual machines to be set up; plus RemoteFx, which adds greater graphical power for thin-clients giving them more of the full Windows experience.

Head on over to Microsoft for the full and sordid details, while you can either hit Windows Update for a smaller, more tailored download for your system, or download the full thing from the Microsoft Download Center.

Take 2

Looks like the new iPad 2, which has been rumored for months, will be announced on March 2. You can read the news here.

Dirty Dozen

Trying to decide if it's time to make Verizon's newest smartphone your own? These 12 facts should help you decide.

New and Improved

At this time of year, electronics companies make a lot of new product announcements; actually, "a lot" is an understatement. Often, though, the products on display are still in the prototype stage, and consumers won't see them on retail shelves and sites until much later in the year—if the products even make it to market.

So which of the myriad enticing devices we’ve heard about recently, from the Consumer Electronics Show and elsewhere, will we actually be able to get our hands on in the near future—within the next couple of months, or even sooner? Here’s a list of very covetable products that are promised to be coming soon.

Trading Spaces

Your Windows password is your first line of defense against someone getting deeper into your system. It's not uncrackable, but you can make it tougher by adding a space—which, oddly enough, Windows is cool with.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe...

So, you've protected all your computers in the office...you're safe from hackers, right? Nope guess again...the newest target for them is now....printers! Yup, you read that right, network printers are usually pretty insecure and can easily allow hackers inside. Here's the scoop.

Seek and Destroy

Ideally, a simple Google search will give you exactly the results you need. When it doesn't, here are the best ways to tweak your web searches to help you get relevant results.

Warning Label

You know those warning that most technology products come with that we just assume they have on there to cover their rear ends in case they get sued? Well, guess what...some of them are actually real warnings that you should pay attention to. Here are 10 Tech Warnings You Missed.

Q and A

When you've got a question but no answer, you can always ask the internet. But where do you start? Here are five popular options for finding answers online.

Mac Attack

It's a great time to be a Mac user. With the advent of the Mac App Store, downloading and updating apps is easier than it's ever been. And it doesn't stop with the store, either: there are plenty of essential apps you can just grab on your own, many of them free and open source.

Virtual Reality

One of the best inventions in my mind when it comes to computing are virtual machines. What you basically do is create a virtual computers inside your computer...but they can't see each other. From data backup to testing new software, you can't beat the advantages of a virtual computer. One of the better ones is VirtualBox. And they have just released version 4.0.

Tweak Away

Setting up policies and restrictions on a Windows computer isn't all that hard using built-in tools, but it's always nice to have a utility on hand which can further simplify the process. True System Security Tweaker (TSST) is a free, portable tool you can use to modify nearly 500 settings on your Windows systems.

Handy Wipes

As more and more people replace their computers, few realize that you may have some pretty confidential data on them. The new HIPAA and HITECH regulations require that you take reasonable measures to protect that data, so jut deleting the files isn't enough I'm sorry to say. Here's how to Wipe, Delete, and Securely Destroy Your Hard Drive’s Data the Easy Way.

Spamalot

Most of us have developed decent methods to control the flow of spam into our email accounts. But, what about text message spam to our phones? That problem is becoming bigger and bigger every day. Here's How to Block Annoying Text Message Spam.

Scene Stealer

Many dental offices use wireless networks for either their own use or by patients. However, that often means that anyone within 150 feet can also get into the network. Ever wonder if someone was stealing your Wi-Fi signal? Here's how to find out.

Clean Out the Trash

Over the years, many webistes written about loads of ways to disable Windows features, tweak things that don’t work the way you want, and remove other things entirely. Here’s the list of the 50 best ways to do just that.

DNS 4 Me

There are plenty of good reasons to use a custom DNS server on your computers. Some services -- like Google DNS -- can provide a speed boost to your Web browsing. Other services -- like OpenDNS and Sunbelt ClearCloud -- can protect you and your family from inappropriate content and malware. So how do you set them up? Here's how!

Home on the Range

One of the great features of Windows 7 is how easy it is to share folders with other computers on the network through the HomeGroup. Here's How to share files using a homegroup on Windows 7.

Keep Away

Today you need to remember many passwords. You need a password for the Windows network logon, your e-mail account, your website's FTP password, online passwords (like website member account), etc. etc. etc. The list is endless. Also, you should use different passwords for each account. Because if you use only one password everywhere and someone gets this password you have a problem... A serious problem. The thief would have access to your e-mail account, website, etc. Unimaginable.

KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish)

Free As a Bird

Recently, 1Dental launched the Free Dental Care Finder, a tool to help Americans find free and low-cost dental care. This tool’s high quality and unique functions will give users immediate access to the 8,000 locations across the country offering dental and health care for little or no money. In a period of economic struggle, the Free Dental Care Finder paves a way for Americans to maintain their health without breaking the bank.

1Dental began developing the Free Dental Care Finder in August 2010 to connect people to low-cost dental care. The goal was to create a highly useful tool that would help a larger group of people.

“We thought of the numerous people we come across in business every year who have been hit by the economy so hard that they cannot even afford our $75 per year discount dental plan,” said Gina Lanthripe, Project Coordinator for the Free Dental Care Finder. “We decided that we could do something to help, even if it wasn’t in our normal line of business.”

When the company began research, they found very little usable data that existed for finding low-cost or free dental care. “A few sites primarily serve as advertisement space, and much of the data available was incomplete and outdated,” said Brian Carlin, Brand Visibility Director for 1Dental. “After discovering that we knew we had a project to do.”

After meticulously searching for 8,300 contacts, the 1Dental team started personally calling and verifying information for each location. It took four months to gather correct information for each one, but the Free Dental Care Finder is now available for all those looking for low-cost and free dental care.

The Free Dental Care Finder will not only be a useful tool for individuals but also for several industries as well. It is designed in such a way that any organization can put a link or a small widget on its website. Their web community can then access the information for free.

“We expect this to specifically help out non-profit organizations, government institutions, schools, libraries, and charities,” said 1Dental CEO Randall Meinen. “We’re not charging anything, so adding the widget is a free way to boost a site's quality within just a couple of minutes.”

D-Day

If you've been salivating about the prospect of getting an iPhone for your Verizon account, today is the day you can order it. Personally, as much as I've dreamed about that...I'm not doing it. This phone is only 3G (as opposed to the newer 4G models), and you can't make calls and surf the web at the same time. If I do get an iPhone, it will be the next version at the earliest.

Rinse and Repeat

Many dental offices ask me what to do with the computers that they are replacing. Maybe you got some next-generation gear over the holidays. Maybe you're just cleaning out unused cruft in this new year. Whatever the reason, you've got gadgets that need to go. Here's where to bring them for responsible, ecological, and (mostly) free recycling.

Old Sites Never Get New Patients

Here's the proof. Watch this short video now...







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