A New Look into the Virtual World of IDT
Inside Dental Technology delivers updates on digital workflows, materials, lab techniques, and innovation in dental technology through expert articles and videos.
June 1, 2012
Volume 3, Issue 6, June 2012
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Sometimes change and innovation come rapidly and other times it takes a little longer to evolve in order to ensure the highest quality end product. It’s the latter that overtook the IDT new online look and content which has been nearly a year in the making.
If you have not visited www.dentalaegis.com/idt since May 1, 2012, I strongly encourage you to do so. I rarely use this space to talk about what we, as a publication and company, have implemented in order to bring you the relevant content that you need to remain competitive, but I must make an exception in this case.
Before exploring the organization and content of the IDT website, I think it’s vitally important to note that a visit to IDT will not only keep you abreast daily on news and stories impacting the dental technology industry but it also opens the door for exploration into the clinical side of dentistry through Inside Dentistry and Compendium. Researching the articles that appear in these two highly respected clinical publications will help you better understand what major factors and challenges your clients are facing—plus it will expose you to the latest clinical research, news, and clinical techniques. It’s a great opportunity for you to keep your clinical knowledge current and, best of all, take a leadership role by sharing articles with your clients that you believe would be of most interest to them. Each article that appears on the dentalaegis.com website allows you to share it via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or through e-mail.
A second distinguishing factor that must be pointed out as you explore the website is our continued commitment to education. Under the Continuing Education banner, you can access all of the IDT CE courses that have appeared in the print publication as well as those designated to online only. Each is NBC-approved and worth a single or half credit. In addition, all are free of charge.
One other area of the website that is noteworthy is the established Communities section. Communities aggregates all the articles, case studies, and Continuing Education opportunities that have appeared in all our publications into five popular categories: CAD/CAM, Caries, Dental Assisting, Implant, and Restorative. There you can also find the latest news and products that pertain to that category, as well as an Ask the Expert section and message boards.
Let’s now get to the IDT website specifically. At the top of the page under the company banner are three selected Must Read news headlines that rotate each time the page is refreshed. These will be updated daily or weekly depending on the amount of important news stories reaching us. We also spotlight the feature story in the latest issue under the Featured Stories section and the newest CE article which is housed in our newly launched CDE World micro-site, an aggregator of continuing education articles from a variety of sources. Moving further down the page, there is a featured web-exclusive video, a poll we would like you to take to measure the pulse of the industry, and a manufacturer’s video that may or may not coincide with one of our in-print MasterClass articles. All the technical articles from our MasterClass section of the magazine can be found under the Technical Articles section of the website. Moving to the right-hand side of the landing page you will find Industry Watch where we house all the latest news broken down into four major categories. There is a Web Exclusives section to the page that will feature special stories that have appeared in print or new stories for exclusive online content. And
finally, our TechEdge articles that have appeared in print can be accessed here online for review.
We are not done yet. There is more to come. But I am proud to say the company team that put all this together deserves recognition for a job well done.
