Oops-a-Daisy

There are tons of inexpensive backup programs out there, especially for home use, but they all have limitations when it comes to past versions of your files and folders. That's why Oops!Backup is so unique...it's basically like Time Machine (the Mac backup system) for Windows, as it can store unlimited versions of files you overwrite or delete. Very slick. The trial is for 30 days, and it only costs $37 to purchase.

Free Photos

Many of like to use stock photos in our brochures and marketing campaigns, and prefer not to spend a fortune doing it. There are lots of free stock photos out there, but how do you find them? Enter Veezzle, a search engine that does just that. A quick search of "teeth" showed me 583 results, plenty for everyone.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

CareCredit has released a new CD from one of my favorite consultants, Sandy Pardue. Here's the news:

COSTA MESA, CALIF., JUNE 2010 — CareCredit, the nation’s leading patient payment program, is offering a FREE educational audio CD, Stress Less and Produce More, featuring Sandy Pardue, Director of Consulting with Classic Practice Resources. With over 25 years of practical experience in the dental field, Ms. Pardue has assisted dental teams with practice expansion and staff development and is known for her comprehensive approach to increasing efficiency and production.

During this 60-minute audio program, Ms. Pardue discusses the three key practice issues that create chaos and stress for the team including open time in the schedule, patient retention and low case acceptance. “We know every dental practice experiences some level of stress. But stress, left unchecked, can not only affect you and your team’s attitude, but it can also significantly impact team performance, the patient experience and long-term loyalty,” explains Ms. Pardue. Drawing from her hands-on experience, Ms. Pardue explains how to minimize gaps in your schedule, uncover patients’ hidden concerns, ways to improve patient retention and why it’s important that patients always finish their appointment by setting their next appointment with the practice.

For more than 20 years, CareCredit has been making it easy for patients to get the dentistry they need with convenient monthly payment plans. Today, CareCredit is at work in more than 125,000 healthcare practices and has been used by over 20 million patients. CareCredit is exclusively selected for their members by most state and national dental associations, including ADA Business ResourcesSM, AGD, AAOMS, and AAP. If you currently offer CareCredit, you can access this audio program in CareCredit’s Online Resource Center. If you are not already enrolled with CareCredit, you can request your complimentary copy by calling 1-800-300-3046 ext. 4519

Socket To Me

Nowadays, many of our mobile devices are USB-based, but those darn wall socket adapters are so easy to lose (or not have enough of). Thankfully, this fall, you can plug those USB devices straight into the wall with the $20 U-Socket.

Most of us tech lovers have no shortage of USB cables in our house, but it seems like there are never enough adapters to go around. The U-Socket installs into any normal wall outlet (a little bit of DIY will be required) and accepts most USB devices, USB 3.0 included, giving them a good 10 watts of power (meaning you can charge even the iPad at full speed). Plus, it's Energy Star compliant, and only outputs power through the port if something is actually connected to it, so you don't spend power and money without getting a full battery out of the deal.

Stay in Touch

If you're like me, you have multiple contact lists of friends and business associates. Wouldn't in be nice to find a way to consolidate all of those lists together? This article explains how.

Tooling Around

There are some great multi-monitor management tools available but if you're trying to keep things free and open-source the pickings get a little slimmer. Dual Monitor Tools is a collection of open-source applications for managing your multi-monitor setup.

Dual Monitor Tools isn't a single application but a suite of individual apps. Load only the ones you need and conserve memory in the process. The suite currently includes four applications Swap Screen, Dual Wallpaper, DisMon, and Dual Swap.

Swap Screen enables hotkey management of windows across your multiple monitors like moving, minimizing, and rotating the contents of monitors from one to the other. You can also restrict the mouse movement to a single monitor. Dual Wallpaper is a simple wallpaper manager that offers different wallpaper on each screen or spanning wallpaper. DisMon allows for selective disabling of monitors—handy for gaming and particularly picky applications that don't play nice with multiple monitors. Dual Snap is a screen capture application designed for capturing images from the secondary monitors. As noted above each application stands alone so if you see at tool that interests you, you can pluck it from the suite and use it without the others.

Worms, Viruses, and Trojans...Oh My!

If you follow my blog posts, then you know that I constantly talk about the various bad things that can attack computer systems. However, it's often important to understand the difference between these different types of malware. Here's a great article that explains the differences.