Turning Japanese

If you want to see the latest gadgets on the planet, then Tokyo is the best place to find them. Here are the month's hottest gadgets. If you want to buy the latest and greatest, my favorite site is Dynamism.

Light and Breezy

While Photoshop is easily the most comprehensive photo editing software out there, it's big and clunky and takes forever to learn. Sometimes, you just want a light program to do some minor editing. Here are Eight Simple Free Photoshop Alternatives, and they are all under 2 MB files!

Tea for Two

Microsoft today released their big Service Pack for Vista and Server 2008, SP2. I'm becoming more of a fan of Vista (I run it at home an my laptop) although I still don't recommend it for dental offices. It adds some nice features and seems to be stable (so far!)

Taking It Online

Adobe is really making a push to expand their online offerings. They today announced the beta release of their online Powerpoint competitor, Adobe.com Presentations. It's pretty slick and while missing some advanced features, it makes up for that with ease of use. Free to use.

Catch and Release

With the Release Candidate of Windows 7 now officially...ummm...released, it's important to know if it make sense to start using this software. Here are 10 Things You Need to Know about Windows 7 RC:1.

Blat from the Past

When I was first getting into computers in the mid 80's, one of the things I loved to do was play computer adventure games. The king of the hill back then was Sierra, with their King's Quest, Space Quest, and other games. Well, if you remember those days fondly like I do, you can now relive those memories by playing the games for free online at Sarien.net. You can also play with other people although it's not cooperative; you can just follow them around. Lots of fun!

Ready or Not

With all the buzz about Windows 7 being released this year, many offices I work with wonder if they will be able to run it properly. Unlike Vista, the requirements for Windows 7 are low and even a 5 year old computer can probably run it. However, if you want to be sure, Microsoft has released the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. It's a beta program but should give you a good idea if your systems will do ok with the new OS.

Sugar, Sugar

While there are many sync programs that allow you to access files from multiple locations, few of them are cross-platform. Meaning, if you have a PC at work but a Mac at home and a smartphone when you travel, you were out of luck. SugarSync aims to end that, with a free system that can store up to 2 GB of files. Paid versions give you more access, but 2 GB may be fine for most of us.

High IQ

A product I mentioned a few months ago, ToothIQ, is now live. Here's the latest info:

We are launching with 66 high quality animations in our catalog, including six new animations on bone grafting. Our IQ Consult system allows dentists to customize content for their patients' needs, by simply checking boxes and clicking "Send email." We have now added the option to send animation only- with no content at all. The animations simply open and play in a new window. That way, the dentist can control exactly which movies the patient views.

The dentist receives an email when the patient views the requested content (if desired), and also an echo of the content he/she prescribes for viewing. This creates an electronic trail to add to their suite of risk management tools.

We are also launching a monthly membership price option (just $69 per month buys a Web microsite within ToothIQ.com, access to the animations, and all the consult tools). Based on the reviews of Orasphere's product, we anticipate that to be very popular.

Lost and Found

No matter how great your efforts are, you're going to lose some data, some time. The question is: what will you do to get it back, preferably without spending a fortune? Here are the Five Best Free Data Recovery Tools.

Tweak Tweak

If you like to tweak your Windows settings but don't want to mess with the Registry (shudder!), then check out a free utility called xDN, which allows you to change many settings that are normally not easy to change.

Minimum Labor

Microsoft has released the official requirements for the Release Candidate (RC) of Windows 7, which is what they will be for the final version. Here are the specs; I don't recommend the minimum, unless you want minimum performance!

Just the Fax

Here's a cool little website: Qipit. While it does a lot of cool things, the feature I like the most is the ability to send faxes of images for free. You're limited to 5 faxes/week, but if you are like me, you send out faxes probably less than that.

Marriage Made in Heaven?

Two very high profile dental companies, the Seattle Study Club and Pankey Institute, are joining forces. Here's the press release:

The Pankey Institute and Seattle Study Club Announce Alliance
Aligns two of the best-known and admired brands in continuing dental education

Key Biscayne, FL and Kirkland, WA – The Pankey Institute (www.pankey.org) and The Seattle Study Club (www.seattlestudyclub.com) today announce an alliance to support each other’s missions and to advance the profession of dentistry. The alliance will build a new community of learning for clinical success as dentists and specialists collaboratively learn and grow together.

The Seattle Study Club (SSC) will exclusively endorse and encourage its members to attend Pankey Institute courses. SSC will feature Pankey-produced articles and case studies in its journal and website. SSC will be the exclusive study club alliance partner for The Pankey Institute, which will introduce SSC to its constituents through its publications, website, and other communications. Pankey attendees will receive referrals to local SSC clubs and will be encouraged to join a local SSC club as part of their Pankey experience. Both entities are likely to collaborate on curriculum development for their respective programs.

“Our ultimate objective is to enable our members to develop the highest-level Interdisciplinary Comprehensive Care for their patients,” says Dr. Michael Cohen, founder of The Seattle Study Club. “We have entered into this alliance because the local nature of the study clubs offers important mentoring opportunities for Pankey Institute students as they advance through the Pankey Institute curriculum. And, the Pankey curriculum offers real value-added benefits for teams of interdisciplinary professionals working together to achieve the best results for their patients,” says Cohen.

According to Mr. Tony Trujillo, President and CEO of The Pankey Institute, “We are committed to providing our students with the best educational experience possible while at the Institute and when they return home, to their local Seattle Study Club. The Chairman of our Education Department, Dr. Irwin Becker, and I also believe strongly that providing SSC members with greater and on-going exposure to the Pankey Philosophy will be of great benefit to them personally and professionally. The Pankey Philosophy is congruent with the educational programs of the SSC and will be an important addition to the SSC curriculum.”

Dr. Barry Segal, Chair of The Board of Directors of the Pankey Institute, says “We are very excited that this alliance will provide the dental profession with enhanced learning opportunities. SSC and Pankey, working together, will provide the dental profession with comprehensive learning both at home and at the Institute.”

Founded in 1972, The Pankey Institute is a nonprofit organization in Key Biscayne, Florida that promotes optimal oral health care through advanced continuing education for dentists (www.pankey.org). It was the first institute of its kind and remains among the most prestigious, attracting dentists from 42 nations to its educational programs. It is estimated that over 20,000 dentists and specialists have attended its courses and now serve millions of patients worldwide.

Founded in 1992, the Seattle Study Club consists of over 225 active specialists across the United States, Canada and Australia, all with their own affiliated study clubs. These doctors, the 6,500 members of their clubs, and the 35,000 affiliated staff members, are dedicated to the advancement of team treatment planning and total case management as the ultimate tool for achieving ideal comprehensive dental care. They have also committed themselves to excellence in their profession, and in the management of their practices.

Pie a la Mode

Here's one of the features I'm most looking forward to in Windows 7: XP Mode. It basically will allow you to run any of your older software as it would run in XP. Remember all the problems people had when Vista came out since many older programs didn't run? That should be a thing of the past.

Take Two

Microsoft has just released their long awaited upgrade to Office, SP2. The big news for me? You can read Open Office document formats, and it now also can create PDF files. This will be a hug time0saver for me.

CDA

It's been a pretty bust day at the CDA. I'll be sending out my annual newsletter review after the meeting. Some pretty exciting things this year. The overall trend I saw is a lot of companies that help dentists market their services. I think this is definitely a sign of the times.

Clip and Paste

Most of you are very familiar with the Windows Clipboard...CTRL-C to cut, CTRL-V to paste. It basically...sucks. Here are the 10 Best Free Windows Clipboard Replacements.

Can You Hear Me Now?

One of my favorite companies, Care Credit, keeps producing excellent audio CDs that they give away to dentists. Here's a press release for the latest;

COSTA MESA, CA., MAY 2009 — CareCredit, the nation’s leading patient payment program is offering a FREE one-hour educational audio CD, Three Steps to Grow Your Practice Starting Today!, featuring Gary Kadi, founder of NextLevel Practice. Kadi is a recognized authority and author on leadership, management, organizational transformation and performance. His first book, Million Dollar Dentistry is currently distributed in 37 countries while the sequel, Raise Your HDL: Healthy Deserve Level for Successful Dental Teams, was released in early 2009.

In this informative, hour-long audio program, Gary Kadi shares his insights and proven formulas to grow a dental practice from the “inside-out” by focusing on areas the dentist and his or her team can control: patient retention, attracting new patients and case acceptance. After explaining why the average patient retention rate is only about 40 percent, Mr. Kadi shares techniques that raise retention closer to 80 percent. He also details his six steps to increased case acceptance and gives tactical ways to attract new, quality patients by leveraging the existing patient base.

For more than 20 years, CareCredit has been making it easy for patients to get the dentistry they need and want. Today, CareCredit is at work in more than 120,000 practices in the nation and has been used by over 7 million patients. CareCredit is exclusively selected for their members by most state and national dental associations, including ADA Business ResourcesSM, AGD, AAOMS, and AAP, and is also recommended by leading practice management consultants. 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 copy by calling 1-800-300-3046 ext. 4519 or visit us online.

Holiday Treats

Well, looks like it is now official: Windows 7 will be out in time for the holiday season. I haven't been this excited about an operating system since Windows 98...looks like it will be a good one.

Team Player

Here's some info on a great new loyalty program to reward your staff:

(Reston, Virginia) – A unique new employee benefit program released today enables dentists to reward their Team Members as much as $10,000 a year in instant cash savings on over 150,000 products and services – from travel to entertainment to brand name merchandise − for as little as $79 per month.

Loyal Team™ Rewards is a turnkey employee loyalty solution, completely customized for dentistry, which rewards dental Team Members for job performance critical to patient satisfaction and practice profitability. The program uses a patent-pending loyalty engine currently serving millions of customers of select Fortune 500 companies and features instant use of rewards for savings (Team Members do not need to collect 25,000 rewards points as in traditional loyalty programs to redeem meaningful savings) and no additional cost to add rewards to a Team Member’s rewards account.

Dentists and office managers can view a brief video explaining the program in detail and enroll in the program at www.LoyalTeamRewards.com.

“From the day we launched our unique patient rewards program, we’ve been asked by almost every practice we’ve spoken with: ‘Don’t you have a program I can use to reward my TEAM members?’” said Gary Serota, co-founder of Loyal Patients, Inc. and the Loyal Team™ Rewards program.

After surveying dentists, Team Members, dental marketing and management consultants, and HR consultants in dentistry, LPI identified 20 key behaviors practices agreed were critical to success. With the Loyal Team™ Rewards system, it takes a dentist or office manager just 5 minutes a month to reward their entire Team.

Practices can reward behaviors including perfect attendance, winning a patient’s praise, closing a cosmetic case or other appropriate dental services, consistently scheduling a patient’s next appointment, always asking for patient cell phone numbers and email addresses, working evenings to fill the appointment schedule, consistently requesting full or partial payment, attending a CE class and sharing new learnings with the Team, achieving individual goals (collections or patient reactivations, e.g.), “performance beyond the basic job description,” and many more.

“During the recession, while many Teams are working harder than ever, many offices find patients are deferring care and practices are coping with flat or even reduced monthly revenue, making it too expensive to increase salaries or pay employee bonuses,” Serota said. This can devastate Team morale, but Loyal Team™ Rewards enables a practice to generously reward solid job performance and thank their Team, despite reduced production,” he noted. “And it’s affordable by every dental practice in the nation, even in the recession,” he said.

LPI co-founder Scott Johnston added that Loyal Team™ Rewards is a dramatic new personnel management tool for dental practices. “Our solution rewards specific employee behaviors that drive dental practice profits and morale, reinforces key behaviors every month in minutes, communicates clear expectations for each Team Member’s success, works with any dental HR/Bonus system, and says “thank you’ from the dentist to each employee who helps the practice succeed.”

Green Thumb

It's always good to conserve energy with your computers. The problem is that most people find it tough to navigate the power settings panel in their control panel. Enter Edison, a free utility that gives you more control and easy interface for conserving energy and even calculate how much money you're saving. Very cool.

Back in Black

While there are tons of free online backup services, many are not all that sophisticated. A new one from Symantec, Norton Online Backup, is much more advanced and at $49/yr, worth a look. You can back up up to 5 of your computers at home, it backs up automatically in real-time, and can store up to 25 GB. Definitely worth a look.

Perfect Score

If you use Adobe Reader to read PDF files, then you know how slow and clunky it is. There are many alternatives, some inexpensive. One that I've been testing that seems really good is Perfect PDF, which is free and very fast.

Back Again

Creating system restore points in Windows XP requires far too many mouse clicks. The process has been greatly simplified in Windows Vista and Windows 7, and it's just about as simple as it can get. Just about.

Single Click Restore Point does what its name implies. Launch the executable, wait a few moments, and a confirmation window appears to let you know that your point has been created

Fix It

Sometimes, you're in a real bind and need a quick fix for some common problems like a crashed hard drive or your cell phone falling into the toilet (don't lie...you know you've done it!)

Here are eight tech tips to get out of a fix.

Problem Solved

If you have Windows Vista (and many of you reading this do, according to my stats), then you know that while there were some nice improvements over XP, there are many annoyances as well. Here are 10 of the Most Annoying Vista Irritations Solved.

Sync Hole

Here's a great service that I've been using for a few months now: DropBox. It basically allows you to sync files across multiple computers and back them up online at the same time. This has been a godsend for me. If I work on a proposal on my laptop when I'm traveling, it automatically gets added to my office computer and home computer. Make some changes to one of the files? No problem...the change is made on all computers. Plus, I can access any of the files from the web. It's free for up to 2 GB, $10 a month for up to 50 GB.

Shape of my Heart

A new CAD-CAM system from a company called 3Shape will be entering the US Market soon. Stay tuned for more news.

Hack and Slash

This is for those of you who like to get your hands dirty when it comes to your computer software. While there are many tools to improve your computer performance, nothing beats editing the Registry. Here are 20 Registry Hacks to Make Your PC More Awesome. This is not for the feint of heart...you MUST backup your registry before making these changes, as it's entirely possible to make your system non-functional if you mess up a registry.

Extending Yourself

One of the best features of Firefox, in my opinion, are the numerous extensions that add functionality to the browser. But, with hundreds of extensions available, how do you choose the best ones? Here are the 10 Must-Have Firefox Extensions.