Group Therapy

Facebook has just announced a total overhaul of the Groups feature, designed to make it easier to share things with the groups of friends who are likely to care about them, without spamming the rest of your Facebook contacts. The new Groups are private by default, which is a big change from the previous publicly-searchable default. Group Chat has also been added, and Facebook says it was one of their most requested features.

You can also change the notifications settings for your group and run it like an email list. Group spam can be held to a minimum because -- wait for it -- you can finally unsubscribe from a thread! Unlike with Facebook messages sent to multiple recipients, you can just opt out, and stop getting notifications for a given thread. Subscribe again later from the group wall if you want to jump back in.

That's the good side of the new Groups. The downside is that you don't have to accept an invitation to be added to a group. You're just in, and you have to go find the "leave group" link on the group page to get out. Also, email notifications are on by default, although they're easy enough to turn off.

All in all, the new Groups makes it a lot easier to share with your various social circles on Facebook, but -- as with anything else Facebook does -- you'll want to take some time to adjust your notification settings to your liking.

Short and Sweet

For those of you who post a lot to Facebook and Twitter, you know how valuable a URL shortener can be, a website that shortens long web addresses so that they fit into the alloted space. Goo.gl, Google's URL shortener, has finally been given a website -- once there, you can shorten links and view real-time analytics of every short link you've ever created.

The site itself is plain, like most of Google's offerings, but the real-time analytics page is nothing short of fantastic. You can break traffic down by hours, days, weeks, months and all time, and see the total number of clicks, and from which referrers. At the bottom you can see the "visitor profiles," which shows you a breakdown of countries, browsers, and operating systems.

The Easy Life

I'm always on the lookout for utilities that makes it easier to get my work done in Windows. One of the annoyances with Windows 7 is that it's not as easy as in the past to drag items to your taskbar.

Free utility Taskbar Items Pinner adds pre-defined or user-defined folders, files, and even web pages to the Windows 7 taskbar.

Adding one of the pre-defined folders (like, say, your Recycle Bin) is easy enough: Just run the app and tick the checkbox next to the folder. Adding other folders, files, or webapps requires a little more work, but is still pretty simple. Browse to the path of the item you want to pin, add an app icon, and click the big Add Item button. Nice and easy!

Blue Bayou

A Different Kind of Social Networking: Official Launch of BlueNote Status Practice Communication Software


Five years after the initial release of BlueNote Communicator Intraoffice Paging System (www.bluenotecommunicator.com), Premade Software has announced the next evolution in dental practice communications.

Using everything that has been learned with Communicator, the crisp interface of BlueNote Status shifts the focus of action onto a location so that needs are handled quickly in a social environment. Examples include room turnovers, patient arrivals, doctor exams in hygiene, phone transfers and calls for an assistant. All personnel can see the status of every location in a single glance, as well as the priority of that status.

Pricing starts at $288 for an entire practice, making BlueNote Status an easy decision for any office, whether computers have been present in operatories for many years or an office is going digital for the first time.

The software is free to download and use for the first 30 days at www.BlueNoteStatus.com

Decisions, Decisions...

For people trying to decide between an iPhone and Android smartphone, the choice can be a little tricky. Unlike the iPhone -- where you're basically picking how much you want to spend on extra storage capacity -- there are dozens upon dozens of different Android handsets.

Figuring out which one is best suited to your needs can be a daunting task, so Google has put together the Google Phone Gallery to try and be of some assistance.

Phones can be filtered by the country in which they're available, the carrier providing service, and manufacturer. You can also compare specs and features -- and every phone listed is Google-approved, so there's no question about access to the Android Market. You're good to go no matter which phone you choose.

One Person's Junk...

One of the most wasteful parts of the day for any dental office is going through the mountains of junk mail that we seem to get on a daily basis. Here are The Best Sites, Numbers, and Forms for Banishing Junk Mail.

Verizon Gets the iPad!! (Well, Not Really)

Many of you may have heard the news yesterday that Verizon is going to be selling the iPad starting on October 28th. You'd think that means that you can use the ipad on Verizon's 3G network...well, think again.

This is marketing at it's finest: tell people something that's already been possible for 6 months and wrap it in a new shiny bow. For those who didn't read the details, this does NOT mean that you can buy an iPad with built-in 3G for Verizon's network. What it means is that you can connect your iPad to a Verizon Mi-Fi, which is basically a mini access point/router/modem that allows up to 5 iPads to get online over a cell phone network.

I actually tested this configuration out when I first got my iPad. My biggest complaints with the Mi-Fi were twofold: first, when I'm traveling, the last thing I wanted was another device that I have to shlep around with me. And, to top it off, the best I could get out of the Mi-Fi was 4 hours of working time before the batteries died.

Hopefully, the day will come when we can swap out an ATT SIM card with a Verizon one...but that day is not today.