Keep It Super Simple: A Dental Technology Integrator's Mantra

Nothing is more frustrating for a dental technology integrator like myself than going into a new network that is just a complete mess. I just did a basic install of some digital x-ray sensors in an office that already had prof.suni and dentrix. As I am going through the workstations loading drivers I see that windows firewall is on, anti virus real time scan is on with no exclusions set, and the current IT guy has like 5 mapped drives all mapping multiple ways to get to the same location. It was just a big mess............ Read the rest of the Keep It Super Simple: A Dental Technology Integrator's Mantra article here!

Lab Coats, Clean Rooms, Robotic Arms: Oh My!

If your anything like me than you probably have a whole slew of electronics; digital cameras, cell phone, laptop, camcorder, etc. With each of these devices you generally use a memory card to capture all of your memories, documents, and media. Ever wonder how those memory cards are made?

Massive clean rooms more clean than a hospital operating room, scientists in lab coats and dust masks, blazing fast and precise robotics laying solid gold wire and soldering terminals all done at mesmerizing speeds. We're talking sci-fi type stuff!

Wanna see?

The guys over at Lexar, leading global provider of memory products for digital media, hooked us up with a behind the scenes video of how their memory cards are made. Enjoy! :)

Too Much: Too Few: What To Do

With all of the different blogs, forums, websites, twitters, facebooks, and everything else on the internet. Sometimes it can be tough keeping up on your favorite writers or your favorite companys and the deals that they might be advertising. Ever wonder how the technologically advanced are able to follow, tweet, blog, and post so many different interesting things without skipping a beat?

There are many different programs that you can use to keep current with all of the information you need to ingest on the daily.

RSS feed is one of my favorites. RSS will feed all of your favorite blogs to your cell phone or computer in a quick and simple format for easy reading.

Check out this list of 45 Different Services, Sites, and Apps to Help You Read Your Favorite Sites

Local IT Person: To Use Or Not To Use

With the Electronic Records Mandate being enforced soon most dental practices need to start putting together a plan on how to go paperless. In my experience there are the dental practices that go with a local IT person, and than there are the practices that go with a specialized dental technology integrator.

At a very minimum you should at least consider using a dental technology integration company that specializes in practice management software, image management, intra oral cameras, and digital radiography, in conjunction with your local IT person........... Read the rest of the Local IT Person: To Use or Not To Use article here!

View What Doesn't Want To Be Viewed

Ever receive an email from someone with a document that you really need but when you go to open it you find that you haven't the right software to open it? Now there's a simple solution that will allow you to read your document quickly and get back to work, without even needing to register.

Here is a listing of the file formats currently supported:

• Microsoft Office – doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, & pps
• OpenDocument – odt, ods, & odp
• OpenOffice – sxw, sxc, & sxi
• Other Formats – rtf, txt, html, csv, & tsv

Check out Zoho's new online conversion and viewer tool

How-To Geek also povides a great How-To on Zoho's new viewing tool.

Apteryx Integration Button Within Practiceworks

Our company supports just about every practice management and image management program thats available for dental practices and two of the most common programs we support is Practiceworks and Apteryx.

If you use one of the variations of the Apteryx imaging software (Prof.Suni, XrayVision, Lightyear, etc) than you know that Apteryx utilizes a program called NameGrabber to "sniff" out patient information from your practice management software and pull it into Apteryx.......... Read the rest of the Apteryx Integration Button Within Practiceworks instructions here!

Beware Of The Dog

We all have experienced it at one time or another, the relentless virus/spyware that attacks one of our office computers. Even with a good anti-virus protection on all of your workstations we can't make up for user error. Websites with malicious pop-ups, emails with virus attachments, etc., are all uncontrollables in the world of computers....until now. A program that we've used for a while now is K9 Web Protection.

K9 Web Protection is a super easy to use program that will allow you to allow most websites while blocking specific ones, or block all websites and only allow specific ones such as your insurance website, practice website and email, etc. Couple K9 Web Protection with a good anti virus program and you'll have your PC's locked down!

K9 Web Protection is also a useful tool if you find that your staff is surfing non work related websites a lot. Your staff might not like you for a bit after installing K9 Web Protection but they sure will be more productive!