Patterson and Dental Learning Centers team up to offer comprehensive, high-tech equipment solution

ST. PAUL, Minn. – (Jan. 24, 2006) – Patterson Dental Supply, Inc. and Dental Learning Centers (DLC) have partnered to supply dental offices with a complete digital photography solution – the Canon^® DentalFoto™ Digital Camera Kit.

            The Canon DentalFoto Digital Camera Kit is optimized through custom programming and a proprietary lens extension manufactured by DLC to assist dentists in achieving accurate and professional photos that are ideal for patient case photos.  Precise and lightweight, the Canon PowerShot A620 camera offers 7.1 megapixels, weighs slightly more than 12 ounces and features a 4X optical zoom.

            The complete kit includes the Canon PowerShot A620 camera, proprietary lens extension, close-up lens set, lens cap, two sets of rechargeable batteries and a trickle battery charger.  The kit also includes three Secure Digital memory cards, a card reader/writer, custom aluminum carrying case and dental photography manual.

“As advancements in digital photography continue, it is important for dentists and their staff to be equipped with this powerful, easy-to-use tool for educating and caring for their patients,” states Patterson Technology Marketing Manager Anne Mansfield.  “The DentalFoto Digital Camera Kit offers a simple solution for dental offices, allowing them to purchase an integrated dental photography system with one easy step.”

For more information about Patterson Dental or the DentalFoto Digital Camera Kit, call 1-800-873-7683 or contact a local Patterson Technology Representative.

Dental Products Report polled GP’s in 2005 on radiography preferences.  Eighty per cent are using film based systems. Four per cent plan on buying a film based system versus 18 per cent that are planning on buying a digital system.  49 per cent say sensors are uncomfortable.

Film is dead.  Kodak is not making slide projectors anymore and will soon stop servicing them.  Digital camera sales have now surpassed film camera sales.  Digital sales are up 80% in 2005 over 2004.  Remember Smith Corona? 

I have noticed that of all of the digital images I take in the office and at home, very few are printed.  In the office, it is only the one’s that go up as office art.  At home, the only images printed are to give to others that may have been at an event.  This will decline as you can post images at no cost on the web.  www.flickr.com.

I just got a Video iPod.  Sixty Gig black model.  This device is amazing.  I have over 5000 songs, 7000 pictures, my calander, and contact list on it.  The images are downsized to the 320×240 resolution of the iPod screen, so they do not eat up storage.  I have less than half of it’s drive in use.  You can transfer all the images at full resolution, and it can act as a backup.

Speaking of back up… How many of you are backing up yoour home images?  What if you computers hard drive failed…which it will, as all hard drives eventially fail.  My point here is to get a firewire back up and do it!  Store it off site if you can.  Have you seen what all of the Katrina victims look for as they search the rubble? Pictures.

The big changes we will see in 2006 will be full size sensors, larger LCD screens to view the images, and the ability to download wirelessly.  Most sensors today on digital SLR’s are smaller than film.  This gives our images a 1.6x multiplication factor from the lens settings.  New sensors, like on the Canon 5D, are the same size as film, making our lenses accurate to settings and they capture better information.  The larger LCD is an obvious advantage. The image at the top is the 2.5 inch screen on the Canon 5D.  The tiny 1.8 inch screens on the current digital SLR’s are very inadequate.  Wireless image transfer will make card readers obsolete.  Press a button and beam your images to your computer.

Nikon has announced the new remote Speedlight SB-R200 and Command Unit SU-800. Aimed primarily at close-up and macro photography, these small units combine to make a wireless flash system, the SU-800 commander unit can be combined with SB-R200 Speedlight (or other compatible Speedlights) in up to three groups. Nikon is selling these components separately but also as Macro kits, which include one command unit and two SB-R200 Speedlights

Although these are point lights and not a ring, they may solve the problem dentist Nikon photographers have had with the SB 29 ring flash that did not TTL meter with Nikon digital’s.  This combination will TTL meter.

Canon will be offering huge rebates on some of the equipment we  use for photography in dentistry from October 15th through January 1st.  The 20D will have a hundred dollar rebate.  If you buy another item from the list all rebates double and if you buy a third, all rebates triple.  So, this makes for a $300 rebate on the 20D, $20 times three, or $60 on the 100 mmm macro lens, $30 times three, or $90 on the ring flash.  The ring flash does not count as an item to triple the rebate, but you can buy a $200 printer and the tripling essentially makes it free.  These rebates amount to over $450.

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Reliable sources believe the iPod could be introduced as early as next week, possibly around the time Apple releases results from its fourth fiscal quarter of 2005.

Although details are scarce, sources who claim to have seen the new iPod describe it as being similar to Apple’s 60GB iPod photo player, but several millimeters thinner.

The device reportedly sports a smaller click-wheel akin to that of the iPod nano’s, making way for a larger, higher-resolution color display that extends further down the face of the device.

The release of the iPod video is expected to be accompanied by a “major update” to Apple’s iTunes music store that will include a significant number of music videos and other short video content.

Apple, which had been updating the “Music Video” segment of its iTunes download service on a regular basis, stopped posting new music video content last month, leading to speculation that a major content update was brewing.

Sources have also recently reported sightings of a new Apple wireless device, which is similar to Apple’s AirPort Express wireless base station, but also includes a video out option. However, it’s unclear if the long-rumored device will coincide with the introduction of a video capable iPod.

Apple recently introduced an ultra-thin version of its iPod called the iPod nano. According to well-placed sources, the company has modeled to sell 3 million of the players each month during the holiday shopping season.

The November 2005 issue of Consumer Reports rates digital cameras. The number one rated compact camera is the Canon Powershot A510. The best Subcompact, my favorite category, is the Canon Powershot SD500, followed by the SD300 (my personal camera).

Bob Walker will be joining me on a cruise next summer.  I will teach a digital dentistry course one half day and he will give an introduction to chirodontics another day.  The cruise is oit of Seattle on Holland America’s Oosterdam.  The best cabins get booked well in advance, so now is not too early if you are interested.  Call Sarah Chay at 888-333-8303 for more information.

NEW YORK, Sept 26 (Reuters) - Germany’s Sirona Dental Systems will take control of Schick Technologies Inc. (SCHK.OB: Quote, Profile, Research) in a $928 million stock deal to broaden its reach in the market for dental imaging technology, the companies said on Monday.

Schick, whose shares rose 6 percent in over-the-counter trading, will pay its shareholders a special dividend of $2.50 per share as part of the deal.

Sirona is a leading manufacturer of high-tech dental equipment; Schick is a leader in digital dental imaging systems.

“This transaction represents a significant strategic growth opportunity,” said Schick President and Chief Executive Jeffrey Slovin. “We will create a company with a strong global presence, an unrivaled breadth of products, and excellence in research and development.”

The merged company, to be named Sirona Dental Systems Inc., will be based in Bensheim, Germany, and will seek a Nasdaq National Market listing for its stock.

It will have $500 million in worldwide sales, including more than $180 million of revenue in North America, Schick said. The deal will boost 2006 earnings per share.

The companies expect to achieve annual combined cost savings of $5 million to $7 million within 12 to 24 months of the deal’s close.

In the deal, structured as a so-called reverse merger, Schick would issue to Sirona’s parent company 36.97 million new Schick shares. Sirona’s owners would hold 67 percent of the combined company, and Schick shareholders would own the balance.

Based on Schick’s closing stock price of $25.10 in Friday over-the-counter bulletin board trading, the value of shares to be issued in the deal is about $928 million.

Including more than $500 million in debt, the deal would have a total value of about $1.46 billion.

Schick shares were up $1.60 to $26.70 in late-morning trade on Monday.

UBS Investment Bank was exclusive financial adviser and Dorsey & Whitney LLP was legal adviser to Schick. JP Morgan was exclusive financial adviser and Kirkland & Ellis LLP was legal adviser to Sirona.

Sirona, which has offices in Germany and Charlotte, North Carolina, recently completed a management buyout with Madison Dearborn Partners LLC and Beecken Petty O’Keefe and Co., two private equity firms based in Chicago. (Additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago)

Andy from Norman Camera called me yesterday and asked if I could do a separate DVD with a demonstration of my 12 clinical shots and a portrait studio demonstration.  He said he is asked for this all the time.  So, we put one together.  It is a half hour and shows how to do the shots correctly and shows some comon mistakes.  In the studio we go through a progression using a ring light, pop up flash, then one, two, and three studio lights.  The cost of this DVD is $75.  Call Linda at 513–777–7017 to order.

I finally got around to converting an hour long digital dentistry lecture and a half hour clinical photography and studio portrait photography demonstration to DVD. 

In the lecture I cover extraoral camera (Canon) versus intraoral video cameras, history of digital cameras in dentistry, case presentation, e mail newsletters, lab communication, monitor color, Power Point applications, resolution, how digital cameras work, compression, memory, white balance, depth of field, camera settings, portrait lighting, retractors, clinical tips, and my recommended series.

This would be a great refresher if you haven’t seen this material in awhile or a good introduction if you have never taken a digital photography course.  It will even give seasoned pro’s a few useful tips.

The DVD is 195 dollars.

I was playing with my new iPod nano today and was blown away.  This little device is $200.  It has 2 Gigabytes of flash memory.  A cheap 2 Gigabyte compact flash card is $150 today. Flash memeory is waay less likely to malfunction.  I have two 30 Gig iPod’s with dead hard drives ($800 down the tube). The nano has this flash memory and a bright LCD color screen, a navagation system in the scroll wheel, a processor, software, and a rechargable battery.  What an amazing value.  I have hundreds of my favorite songs, many memorable images, my contact list, and my calander on this tiny device.  This all downloaded easily from my iMac by enabling a few synch buttons.

I can see the evolution of this device.  It will have Blue tooth and WiFi, so when in range of a connection, it will be able to access the internet, make internet based free phone calls to anywhere in the world. (phone companies are in trouble), print to a WiFi or Blue tooth enabled printer, send images, take picture with a digital camera, and receive e mails.  It will serve as a phone with a blue tooth earpiece.  You can keep it in your pocket while making calls.  It will connect with your car via Bluetooth and play your iTunes songs.  It will display content on your car’s LCD screen amd turn over key controls to your cars interface.  It will track it’s location through GPS and transfer this information to your car.  It will use a local network harddrive as it’s harddrive via a WiFi connection.  This will enable huge storage.  It will act as a RF and IR remote for devices in your home.  It will act as a key to start your car.  I suspect it may even pick up digital television signals and enable you to watch television on it.  I just saw a USB television tuner that will allow a laptop to get a television signal.  This will be released in Europe this fall.  Can’t wait!

I have been asked a million times where doctors can get good before and after shots if they do not have any of their own for web sites and case presentation.. I have placed a number of my before and after cases on www.photostockplus.com.  They are avaliable for purchase. Type Dentistry in the search box to find the images.

This is a great reason to have a great web site that is positioned well.

“117 million adults in the United States have gone online to find healthcare information.  Of these, 57% have discussed the information they found online with their doctors.”

Source – Harris Interactive

We are going to do a seven day Continuing Education cruise on Holland America’s Oosterdam from Seattle next August. We have been on about 20 cruises over the years, and Alaska is by far our favorite. Holland America was one of the first lines to sail to Alaska and they have it down. Day 0 Seattle Departs at 5 PM. Day 1 At sea. Half day lecture Day 2 Juneau, Alaska 11 AM to 8 PM. Day 3 Hubbard Glacier Noon to 5 PM Half day lecture Day 4 Sitka, Alaska 7 AM to 6 PM Day 5 Ketchikan, Alaska 7 AM to 1 PM Day 6 Victoria, BC 8 PM to Midnight Day 7 Seattle 7 AM. http://www.hollandamerica.com/dest/itinerary.do?selectedItin=20060812:O642:AEO007&dest=A The Oosterdam is a new grand-Vista class ship, Holland America’s largest. Because it does rain in Alaska, this ship has a retractable dome that covers the main pool to keep the kids happy. http://www.hollandamerica.com/fleet/fleetHome.do?ship=os

DDSMac,  LLC has taken it upon themselves to write a new Dental PM for the 
Macintosh OS X platform that does that and more. It’s not just about 
the clicks though as it’s more about usability of the software and 
the leveraging of what the OS provides.

www.macdentpro.com

Apple’s basic philosophy is this… Make it as simple and elegant as 
you can, then do it again and again until you can’t distill the 
combination of power and simplicity any longer. The iPod is a great 
example of this design philosophy. We have striven to do that with 
our new application, MacDent Professional, and feel we have achieved 
that milestone.

Two years ago when we started development, myself and my development 
team took a long hard look at EVERYTHING out there. From Mac-based to 
Windows-based products. The first comment from the programmers’ mouth 
following these demos were, “That’s so 70’s”.

 From a programmer’s and designer’s perspective there are several 
factors which come into play when designing and creating software. 
First is the interface, second is the underlying data engine and 
third are the underlying tools needed to produce the product. The 
order listed is not particularly significant, but every piece has to 
be there.

Our basic design and implementation is defined below:

1) Apple almost demands a certain sense of perfectionism from their 
developers which carries through into every piece of software 
designed for the Mac. This is evident in how common menus among 
different applications ALWAYS work the same. The user is not left 
guessing what and how they are supposed to use something. Drag and 
drop works as expected. Contextual clicking works where appropriate. 
A rich set of controls is provided by the Apple API (Application 
Programming Interface) that allows the programmer to include the 
functionality needed within the application. But even beyond that is 
the extensibility provided by the fact that every new application 
written for the Mac is purely object-oriented. This means that code 
can be reused throughout the system and extended in ways that are 
very difficult in conventional programming systems. Objective-C was 
created specifically for this purpose and melds perfectly into OS X. 
I’ll discuss this more below.

As noted above, Apple is stickler for good interface design. I don’t 
see this on the Windows side as developers seem to run the gamut and 
produce their own interfaces much to the dismay of their users. For 
you Windows users, take a good look at iTunes (on Windows) and you’ll 
understand precisely what I mean. Compare it to any Windows 
application and you’ll see the superiority of the Apple design 
philosophy. Our design philosophy mirrors Apple’s precisely.

2) Dental data is an intricate weaving of so many entities and 
relationships. Hence there was no real choice but to go with a 
database engine that provided such. Even more importantly is we 
wanted to retain industry standards so as to provide for easy 
upgradability and extension of the system as it grew and newer 
technologies come on board. We chose the Postgres SQL engine because 
of this. It is an Open Source engine that is non-proprietary and is 
constantly being improved by people who really care about good 
software. Apple even uses it within their OS for a technology known 
as Apple Remote Access.

The prime example of this, is that we can have “partners” access the 
data of our application without having to know anything about our 
application. In this case it is eClaims and as it goes forward it 
will be for third party report generators and the like. In the end it 
extends our system like no other. No longer are you strapped by a 
system that is defined only by the application’s developers. The 
speed of such systems is also a pleasure to behold. Using relational 
methods of data interconnection, the data you request is 
instantaneously available. Flat file systems as Ekram described 
literally “fall flat” when speed is required. Case in point, Postgres 
can process upwards of 10000 requests per second. No dental office I 
know of will ever need that kind of power.

Being open source, Postgres requires no licensing fees. What this 
means to our customers is that you won’t be charged additionally for 
the data engine. There are several other products out there that do 
impose an additional surcharge for this. In many cases there are 
limits on the numbers of users as well. This is fee related and if 
you exceed that number you have to pay again. So ask first before you 
jump.

3) What tools are available? Are they consistent? Do they mesh well 
with the OS?  Let’s answer each of these individually first.

     a) Apple provides the XCode development environment with EVERY 
Mac. You do not have to be a developer to purchase the environment. 
It is part of the OS.
     b) Apple makes it (XCode) as they do the machine and the OS. The 
integration is unlike anything you see anywhere. In a Windows 
development environment you are strapped by the individual hardware 
vendors and their own CMOS implementations. Every bit of code we 
write runs the same on EVERY machine that Apple produces.
     c) XCode speaks OS X’s language. The intimation needs to be seen 
to be understood. From a developer’s standpoint, it’s WOW! No having 
to buy a separate editor or version control package to manage code. 
Multi-language support is built in. Testing tools are provided to 
check for memory leaks, performance, code analysis, etc.

Apple’s API’s (Application Programming Interface) provides direct 
links to the OS. Technologies that are embedded in the OS are also 
available to the developers. For example, connection to digital 
cameras is but a call of an internal OS function. Synchronization to 
your PDA (doesn’t matter what kind) or iPod is seamless and easy to 
implement. OS X Tiger introduced something known as Core Image. We 
are leveraging that for our Imaging View to provide you with a mini-
Photoshop within MacDent Pro. Searching for data? Spotlight 
technology is built-in. Email functionality? All applications have 
access to something called AppleScript. We can literally “talk” to 
other applications on your Mac and have them do things like create 
emails and send them, add your day’s schedule to iCal or a selected 
patient or patients to the Address Book. The list goes on and on, but 
I think you all get the point.

Remember what I said about usability? That is what it’s really about. 
I don’t want to have to waste time fiddling with my computer trying 
to get it to work and dealing with incompatibilities. The Mac OS and 
Apple’s hardware see to that. MacDent Pro see’s to your office needs 
because we are a good Apple citizen.

3 clicks? Most everything in MacDent Pro is accessible with ONE click 
or ONE double-click or Right-Click. Three (3) clicks is passé and old 
school. Sorry Ekram, but it’s true. Interface studies have 
demonstrated that delving down into 2 or more levels begins to 
preclude your user from remembering just what they did to get there 
ultimately resulting in lost productivity.

www.macdentpro.com

KODAK is introducing the RVG 5000, a more economical system, than there existing system, the RVG 6000.  This RVG 5000 has been sold in Europe and across the globe.

The RVG 5000 captures 14 bline pairs per millimeter, one of the highest resolution intraoral radiography systems available today.  The RVG 6000 captures 20 line pairs per millimeter, the highest in the industry.

www.KODAK.com/dental

This is the most often asked question in the Digital Dentistry field.  There are two camera set ups I am currently recommending: are:

1. The Canon 20D with a Canon 100 mm macro lens and Canon MR-EX 14 ring flash.  This kit is around $2800.

2. The Canon Rebel 350 has a lighter weight camera body than the 20D and has plenty of resolution and features.  This lighter weight can be augmented by using a Canon 60 mm macro lens that is quite a bit lighter than the 100 mm.  The same Canon ring flash is used with this set up as with the 20D.  This kit is around $2100.

I revised my text on Digital Dentistry last year.  It was a major rewrite.  It is a text of my all day lecture.  It is avaliable for $195 by calling Linda at 513–777–7017.