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Filed under: Utilities, Office, Productivity

Doodle.ch: elegant, no-fuss scheduling utility gets a Facebook app



Doodle.ch is a straightforward, highly-usable tool for scheduling events or making decisions with a group. It generates polls that the members of your group can use to fill in their availability for an event, or even simpler polls that let you make a list of options (What should we serve at dinner? Which movie should we see?) and see which ones work for your group members. We last wrote about Doodle two years ago, and it's gotten a lot better since then, so I thought it was time for an update

You can now export your Doodle appointments to other calendars (Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.). Some power user options have been added, like hidden polls and an ifneedbe option. The latest new feature is a Facebook application, which brings the power of Doodle into a space where a bunch of people you know probably already hang out. Now you don't even have to get people to wander over to a Doodle URL to fill out your poll. How much easier can it get?

Filed under: Internet, Web services, web 2.0

ZocDoc adds docs: Schedule appointments online

ZocDoc
New York-based medical appointment scheduling service ZocDoc is expanding its offering today. When the company launched last year, users could make appointments with a few dozen dentists in New York city. This week, ZocDoc is adding primary care physicians in Manhattan to the mix.

The service is designed as an alternative for patients who would normally go to their medical insurance provider's web site to find a doctor. That process can be complicated and you don't end up with much useful information about a doctor. ZocDoc includes an easy to use scheduling feature and an user feedback from patients who have previously seen a doctor.

Because most doctors and dentists have unfilled appointments or cancellations throughout the day, ZocDoc makes it easy to schedule last minute appointments without calling a dozen doctor's offices first.

ZocDoc is still limited to New York only, and there are a relatively small number of doctors and dentists signed up. But when we tried out the service for ourselves a few months back, we had no trouble finding an appointment with a nearby dentist on short notice. The company does have plans to expand the service to other markets in time.

Filed under: Internet, Features, Web services, Beta

ZocDoc helps you book medical appointments faster - DLS Interview


ZocDoc is launching a limited public beta today. The site lets you search for a doctor or dentist based on location, specialty, and what kind of insurance they accept. It's sort of like OpenTable, but instead of making restaurant reservations you're making making appointments that could be matters of life or death. We guess the same could be true of some restaurants.

At launch, ZocDoc is only available for dentists in New York. Eventually the site plans to add doctors, first in New York and then in other cities. Visitors to the site will be able to vote on which cities they want to add, and the goal is to be in 1 or 2 more cities within the next year and in 8 or more cities within 2 years.

The site is officially launching at TechCrunch40 tomorrow, but we wanted to know why anyone would use the site, so we interviewed CEO Cyrus Massoumi (see the video). He says he's confident ZocDoc will fill the needs of both patients and doctors, and estimates that online medical appointments could become a $15-30 billion industry. We're a bit dubious of those numbers, but when it comes to medical expenses, anything is possible. Patients won't have to pay to use the service. Doctors will.

You can also download the audio of this interview if you'd like or subscribe to our podcast for all our audio interviews. Our Podcast is also available through iTunes.

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With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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