Battle of the Bulge

With Firefox 4 having just been released, many of you may be re-evaluating your browser of choice. Here's how the top browsers fared in a recent speed test.

A Walk in the Clouds

Amazon has just launched its free Amazon Cloud Player for both Android and the Web, plus an accompanying digital locker service, Amazon Cloud Drive. Amazon has beaten both Apple and Google to the punch with a digital locker music streaming service for Amazon.com customers, and it can be yours for free, right now.

Perfect 10

Patterson Dental Debuts Smile Channel 10

Five new and 11 updated presentations give your practice the best in front-office patient education

ST. PAUL, Minn. – (March 29, 2011) – Patterson Dental Supply, Inc. introduces Smile Channel 10, an updated version of its reception area programming that entertains and educates patients while promoting dental services. As part of the popular CAESY Education Systems family, Smile Channel 10 offers attention-grabbing and informative presentations with dramatic before-and-after photos, 3-D animations, full-color graphics, and full-motion video.

This edition of Smile Channel 10 features an updated look and feel, with new presentations covering smile restoration topics such as “Hiding Your Smile?” “Why Not You?” and “Healthy Mouth, Healthy Body.” Additionally, new presentations are offered on today’s cutting-edge dental technologies, including Identafi and Under Armour. Updates have also been made to existing presentations such as “Smile Restorations,” “Repairing Chipped Teeth” and “CEREC CAD/CAM.”

Smile Channel 10 plays an invaluable role in many dental practices not only by educating patients on general dental health topics, but also by promoting discretionary services in an informative and credible way. The front-office programming prompts patients to ask the dental team about these services once in the operatory, helping open the door to discussions and treatments that patients may not have considered on their own. Smile Channel 10 helps inform both new and existing patients about how dentistry can improve not only their smiles, but their lives.

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.

Speedy Gonzalez

Speedtest.net is pretty much the go-to site for quickly figuring out how fast (or slow) your connection really is and comparing the numbers your ISP boasts with what it actually delivers. And now it's got a new coat of paint and a couple of neat features. Check it out here.

Social Butterfly

If you're a social networking butterfly, or if you have the malevolent aspirations of one day becoming a 'social media expert,' you almost certainly spend a vast amount of time surfing the Web. You probably use a modern browser like Firefox or Chrome, and you almost certainly have a ton of tabs open at the same time.

It can be hard work, keeping track of multiple websites. Hitting F5 is a pain in the you know what -- and waiting those few seconds for a page to reload can be mighty frustrating. Then there's the matter of remembering all of your login names and passwords (because you don't use the same password on more than one site, right?)

Wouldn't it be great if there were some add-ons and extensions that could make light work of your surprisingly busy social networking lifestyle? Even if you only use Facebook or Twitter, there are still plenty of annoyances that could be offloaded to add-ons.

Fortunately, as you've probably guessed, there are plenty of add-ons and extensions for both Chrome and Firefox. Read on!

Lap Dance

Choosing which laptop is the best for you can be a tricky business, and the amount of choice can be overwhelming.There's no shortage of cheap laptops out there to choose from, but with new models bring released and almost immediately replaced by manufacturers, the choice is no easy task. Here are The 20 Best Laptops in the World.

Keeping Tabs

With all the recent buzz on Tablet PCs, it's hard to tell which one is right for you. Here's a comparison of the main players that will hopefully help.

Tweet Tweet

With more than 190 million users, and less than half of those using Twitter.com to post updates, the installed Twitter client market is massive. There are literally hundreds of Twitter clients spanning every desktop and mobile platform, and even a few cross-platform Web apps thrown into the mix.

Even if you narrow down the search to just one platform -- Windows -- there's still a dizzying amount of choices to pick from. There isn't even an official Twitter for Windows that scared newbies can pick up.

Well, good news: Here are the choices so that you only have to choose from the best of the rest.

Passing Lane

We've all heard it before; you need to select a lengthy password, one that's hard to guess. Not a dictionary word. And it has to have some capital letters in it too, and some digits, and a symbol or two won't hurt either.

That's a handy set of rules to keep in mind, but How Secure is My Password helps us understand why they're important.

It's basically like a full-screen version of one of those password-strength meters websites sometimes use. But instead of showing you a bar going from "weak" to "strong", it shows you an estimation of how long your password would take to crack. That's a much more visceral way to understand why your password is strong.

Caring by Sharing

CareCredit, the nation’s leading patient payment program, continued its support as founding donor of the American Dental Association Foundation Give Kids A Smile Fund with its fifth consecutive $100,000 donation. The donation was made at the Give Kids A Smile National Advisory Board meeting, February 23, 2011, in Chicago. The funding will help the American Dental Association Foundation continue to make grants that support the Give Kids A Smile Program.

The American Dental Association’s Give Kids A Smile program has several objectives:
•to raise awareness of the high level of oral disease suffered by children primarily from low income families;
•to demonstrate dentistry’s commitment to addressing access to care;
•to enable volunteer dental teams across the country to provide free dental care, screening, and education to children in need; and
•to urge policymakers to increase funding for children’s oral health.

In 2010, with the help of CareCredit’s contribution, the ADA Foundation awarded grants to the Hispanic Dental Association (HDA), the National Dental Association (NDA) and Oral Health America. The HDA is using its grant to fund local dental-student-led oral health programs in Los Angeles, San Antonio and Boston, to expand their mobile dental van program and participation in local health clinics. The NDA is enhancing the Deamonte Driver Dental Project, a memorial to a young boy who died from an infection in his brain that was caused by untreated dental decay, to reach more elementary schools and expand mobile dental van services. Oral Health America’s grant funds have been distributed to Smiles Across America sites in California, Minnesota and Nevada, which has enabled thousands of children to receive education, preventive care and restorative services.

“Dental disease among children is a serious issue in the United States. When a child has disease and pain, it makes it difficult for them to eat, sleep and learn. CareCredit became the Founding Donor of the American Dental Association Foundation Give Kids A Smile Fund to help increase children’s access to treatment throughout the year,” stated board member and Senior Vice President of Marketing at CareCredit, Cindy Hearn. “Each year we are so impressed with how the grant recipients use the funds to reach out in their community.”

“The ADA Foundation and its Give Kids A Smile Fund greatly appreciate CareCredit’s continuing support. CareCredit’s generosity will play a key role in helping Give Kids A Smile achieve its goal of cavity-free kids by 2020,” stated Dr. David A. Whiston, President, ADA Foundation.

Today, CareCredit is offered in more than 86,000 enrolled dental practices. CareCredit is exclusively selected for their members by most state and national dental associations, and is also recommended by leading practice management consultants. For more information on CareCredit, call 1-800-300-3046 ext. 4519 or visit www.carecredit.com/dental. Information on Give Kids A Smile® can be found at www.givekidsasmile.ada.org.

Putting on the Brakes

Many of you have DVDs at the office that you would like to put on a central server to make it easy to show them on multiple computers. Probably the easiest program I've used for ripping DVDs in Handbrake. Here's a great tutorial on how to use it.

On the Fly

Popular remote computing tool GoToMyPC has launched an iPad app, joining competitors like TeamViewer HD in the App Store. You'll need the host program installed on any computers you wish to access, and an account is also required (but GoToMyPC does offer a free a 30-day trial).

Fire up the app on your iPad, and you're presented with a list of computers you've previously enabled for remote access. Connections via Wi-Fi and 3G are both supported, and all communication is 128-bit AES encrypted. GoToMyPC also features touch and gesture controls, which, of course, you'd expect from an iPad app.

Ba Da Bing

According to Web analytics company StatCounter, Bing has overtaken Yahoo in January to become the No.2 search engine worldwide.

Once you see the numbers though, it's tough not to feel sorry for both Bing and Yahoo, since Google's global market share in February was 89.94% -- with Bing following at 4.37% and Yahoo at 3.93%. And while Google has fallen below 90% for the first time since August 2009, the gap between it and its competitors is still incredibly large. No matter how much money Microsoft continues to throw at this, the No.1 spot seems a certainty for Google for the forseeable future.

Back Breaker

We spend a lot of time sitting at our desks every day, and while it may not look like it, it can wreak havoc with our bodies. Here's how to set up a healthy, ergonomic workspace to keep you comfortable and injury-free.

Up in Smoke

It's time again for the annual Vaporware Awards, where they recognize products, videogames and other nerdy tidbits pitched, promised and hyped, but never delivered. Enjoy!

Net Worth

NetWorx is a simple and free, yet powerful tool that helps you objectively evaluate your bandwidth situation. You can use it to collect bandwidth usage data and measure the speed of your Internet or any other network connection. NetWorx can help you identify possible sources of network problems, ensure that you do not exceed the bandwidth limits specified by your ISP, or track down suspicious network activity characteristic of Trojan horses and hacker attacks.

The program allows you to monitor all your network connections or a specific network connection (such as Ethernet or PPP) only. The software also features a system of highly customizable visual and sound alerts. You can set it up to alert you when the network connection is down or when some suspicious activity, such as unusually heavy data flow, occurs. It can also automatically disconnect all dialup connections and shut down the system.

4D for Me

Be sure to join us next week for a FREE WEBINAR with internet marketing guru, Ridgely Goldsborough--a no-holds-barred conversation where he will reveal what's working online, what's not working and why anyone who doesn't use the internet to promote their business will soon be closing their doors--PLUS the top three secrets to boost your patient flow that you must know to crush your competition. Join Dr. Gary Sanchez as he pulls no punches to extract every possible nugget. Mark your calendar on March 22 at 9:00pm EST for "Get Web Savvy Fast--Or Else! An In-depth Conversation with Renowned Internet Expert, Ridgely Goldsborough...". Call (951) 262-4343 and use access code 694966#.

I Dream of Genie

SendGenie is a slick new app (currently in open beta testing) which makes sharing files and photos as easy as dragging and dropping. Once installed, SendGenie adds a dropzone widget to your desktop which you can hide and unhide via the system tray icon. When you want to zap a file to a friend, just drag it onto the dropzone. Your file will be added to a send queue, and you can then choose the people you want to send the file (or files) to. Works with PC or Mac.

Group Picture

With more and more dental offices using social medial to market their practices, it's becoming increasingly difficult to manage all your online presences at once. Here are the Five Best Social Media Managers.

Prying Eyes

When you're browsing from a public Wi-Fi connection—like at your favorite coffee shop—anyone on that network can snoop on what you're doing, with very few exceptions. So can the IT crew at your office. Here's a walk through for setting up an encrypted proxy server on your home computer so you can secure your browsing session no matter where you're connected, keeping your private data significantly more private

Color Me Confused

With many dental offices going through a lot of color printing, the question of ink comes up quite often. Printer manufacturers want you to buy their ink and would like you to believe that knock-off ink is killing your printer. So is knock-off ink actually a bad idea? Check here.

Part and Parcel

GParted is an extremely handy LiveCD to keep in your technician's toolbox, and its new version features one very major addition: GParted 0.8 can now help you recover data from lost partitions. After analyzing your drive and doing its best to resurrect missing information from the partition table, GParted will now let you mount partitions it finds in read-only mode so you can copy your data to another drive.

Whether you're trying to recover a partition from your Windows, Mac, or Linux system's hard drive, GParted is up to the task. It supports 17 common filesystems, RAID arrays, and even flash drives.

Speed Demon

There’s no question that Windows slows down over time. Don’t fear though, because you can speed it up. MakeUseOf’s latest guide, Windows On Speed, includes all the information you need to speed up your slow PC!

Oh, BTW, Happy Birthday to Me! 365 days until the big 5-0!

Cuts Like a Knife

With Moore's law still going strong and computers getting faster every year, it's easy to understand why we direct our attention to CPU performance and the fastest graphics cards on the market. But just as computers advance, so do computer accessories. We're beyond the basic keyboard and mouse configuration now. Here are 10 accessories that may change how we interact with our computers.

EHR 4 U?

With all the push by the ADA and the Federal Government towards an electronic health/dental records, it's important to know that most patients are not in favor of this. Here's a good study that shows that many patients have concerns.

Hot to Trot

Do you like to use public Wi-Fi networks to get online? Travel a lot and need to acess the office network? then a VPN is for you. Sure, you can make it as complicated as you'd like...or just download Hotspot Shield. I've been using it for months, works like a charm.

Browsing Bonanaza

There are add-ons, VPNs, and apps galore that offer a safer browsing experience—but the browser you use, and the sites you visit, offer strong but simple security tools, too. Here are the best of the no-hassle, no-install-required options that you should be using now.

Patrol Car

WinPatrol -- a great tool for keeping an eye on system processes and files -- has been updated to 20.0.2011. Support for 64-bit Windows installations has been improved, and WinPatrol is generally more responsive now than in previous versions. WinPatrol's "move to delayed start" option provides a nice way to improve your system's startup time, and it has also been tweaked for better operation on Windows x64.

WinPatrol 2011 is better at detecting processes that may be emerging threats -- though you'll need a PLUS subscription to take advantage. The $29.95 fee gets you a lifetime of upgrades, so WinPatrol is well worth considering if you're keen on knowing what's happening under the hood of your Windows OS.

Trick or Treat

There are a lot of viruses out there, but many of them follow the same pattern: they lock you out of your system and only let you visit their site, pretending to be anti-virus software. Here's a trick to squash them.

Take 2

Been hearing about the Apple iPad 2? Today was the day the news was finally announced. Read about it here.

Perfect 10

Patterson Dental Introduces CAESY 10 DVD

Most comprehensive update yet, with 61 new and updated presentations; new look and feel

ST. PAUL, Minn. – (March 1, 2011) – Patterson Dental Supply, Inc. introduces CAESY 10 DVD, a comprehensive update to its acclaimed patient education software program. Dental professionals will find a new look and feel with CAESY 10 DVD, as well as 61 new and updated presentations that give them the most up-to-date tools for explaining diagnoses, procedures, alternatives and post-op instructions to patients. While the look and branding of CAESY 10 DVD is new, it offers the same cutting edge technology as ever, with more presentations than any other patient education software on the market.

New and updated presentations on the discs include pediatric segments, an entirely updated esthetic galleries section, and brand new presentations on minimally invasive dentistry, IV sedation and cone beam X-ray. Other notable new presentations profile hot topics in the industry such as xylitol and fluoride, as well as the popular new Under Armour Mouthwear line.

CAESY gives dental professionals more tools and more options than ever before, with over 270 multimedia presentations, all of which are offered in both English and Spanish. Countless dental professionals have seen how CAESY optimizes staff time, eliminates the fatigue of repeating explanations, and increases case acceptance. With full-motion video, full-color graphics and dynamic 3-D animation, CAESY 10 DVD makes it simple for patients to see and understand the message.

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.