PDRater.com

Wordpress Upgrade

I upgraded the website to WordPress 2.7 RC 1 over the weekend.

I generally do not bother installing the updates between the major upgrades.  My major concern in upgrading is eliminating possible security issues and obtaining additional program features.  I maintain a totally separate website from PDRater.com, also running on WordPress, where I install the very latest versions of WordPress and try out new variations on the look-and-feel of this website, new calculators, and new ideas about how best to present the current calculators.

Very late Wednesday night I upgraded this website to WordPress v2.7.  I’m not sure I fully appreciate how much better it might be than the various release candidates.

Thursday morning I discovered an unintended effect of upgrading is that it “broke” one of my plugins.   (Reza: Thanks for pointing it out!)  I had modified an existing plugin, EasyPayPal, to allow this website to accept credit card payments.  WordPress v2.7 changed the user profiles area of the website - and made it so that instead of seeing an option to become a paid subscriber, you just saw a cryptic PHP error.  This is nothing that would have compromised a credit card number or anything - it just would have prevented anyone from giving me money.

A little bit of bug testing, one new line of code and its back up and running.  :)

Driving home from a deposition on Tuesday evening I was listening to NPR.[1] They had a piece about how food banks in California are struggling.  Donations across the board are down.  Corporations that used to donate are reducing or even eliminating their donations.  People who once donated to food banks are now showing up asking for food.

Tuesday night I made a decision to help my local food bank.

• I have donated all of the income from this website, retroactive to November 1, 2008 to my local food bank.  I will be sending out an e-mail to all current paid subscribers thanking them for their support of this website and, by extension, our food banks.

I also decided to make a further commitment.

• I will continue to work on this site to bring you the absolute best workers’ compensation calculators for free.  And, I will continue to donate every single cent from this website to this food bank through the end of this year.
• If you buy a monthly subscription, I will donate your subscription to this food bank through the end of the year.  If you buy a yearly subscription between now and the end of the year, I’ll donate the whole thing to them.  I do not believe this would be tax deductible for you, so I’ve thought of another option.
• If you make a donate of any amount to your local food bank, just send me a copy of the receipt and I will give you an equivalent amount of subscription access to this website. [2]

If you use this website chances are you’re a professional who can spare enough to make a donation.  I’m no good at impassioned pleas or eloquent words.  Please make a donation and help out some hungry folks.  If you want to sign up for access for this website, please e-mail me or try to make an online payment through your profile on this website.

Thank you.

1. I’m an NPR junkie, remember? [↩]
2. E-mail, fax, mail - whatever works for you. [↩]

Going Viral

“Going viral” is the latest marketing buzzword to make it into the public consciousness.  This phrase refers to a process where something is promoted mainly by word of mouth.  The “viral” part of the phrase means to imply that popularity will spread exponentially, like a virus.[1]

The most memorable examples of “viral marketing” in recent years is probably the “Blair Witch Project.”  This super-low budget movie was popularized largely through word of mouth, making the highest profit-to-cost ratio movies of all time.[2]

What does this have to do with you or PDRater.com?

Scott Adams, the creator and author of the wildly popular Dilbert comic, recently published a blog post about what he referred to as, “digital tipping.”  He puts up a blog post every day[3] but makes little to no money off of it.  Recently he partnered with a company which provides a free service[4] in the hopes, or so I believe, that people will use the free service and upgrade to the pay service providing him, in turn, with a financial reward.

Scott Adams made an interesting point about how his blogging has affected his core business - publishing comic strips.[5] He discovered that his sometimes controversial blog posts sometimes turned people off from his comic strip - thereby losing a portion of his fan base forever.  On the flip side, although his blog is fairly popular his blog rarely improves his comic strip fan base.

A simple cost benefit analysis would suggest that the observed risk is not worth the potential incremental benefit - especially in light of the ongoing time commitment required to publish blog posts.  I suspect that my own blog posts have a similar risk-reward scenario.

Assuming that I’m acting rationally in blogging, why do I continue to do so in light of an unfavorable bost benefit analysis?  Firstly, I rather enjoy writing.  Secondly, its my understanding that search engines rank frequently updated websites slightly higher.  Thirdly, it is my hope that popularity, knowledge, and use of this website will “go viral.”

Much like Scott Adam’s concept of “digital tipping,” will help me at no cost to themselves by telling their friends about this website, how useful it is for them, and how this website saves them time.  So, if you enjoy or appreciate this website, why not tell a friend?

1. Photo courtesy of AJC1 [↩]
2. Incidentally, unseating Mad Max which held the title for twenty years. [↩]
3. Its not easy!  I missed two days last week! [↩]
4. Which can be upgraded to a pay service. [↩]
5. I wish I could find that link! [↩]

MicroSoft has no one to blame but themselves for my deleting MicroSoft Office.  Well, its partly Dell’s fault too, but that’s a long story I’ll tell some other time.  (Short version: Dell repaired a prior laptop and shipped it to a construction site in Oakland.)

Once I tried OpenOffice, I never looked back.  Its my preferred word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, office suite program.  Not only is it better than MicroSoft office in just about every way, but its also completely free.  You might be interested in trying it out because I believe it will help you tremendously with EAMS.

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org released version 3.0 of their program on October 13, 2008.  It was so wildly popular that their website was crushed under the overwhelming demand.  The three most important things to know about OpenOffice are:

1. Its open source, so its completely free.  So, there’s no reason not to give it a shot.
2. It can open, edit, and save to any MS Office 2000, 2003, 2007, and WordPerfect formats.
3. It can print or export any file to a PDF.

If you’re a Workers’ Compensation professional in California, you’re probably dealing with EAMS.  Since filing things with EAMS means working with a lot of PDF’s.  In order to keep from reinventing the wheel, it makes sense to save those PDF’s of the document cover sheets.  But what if you need to make a small change later on?  Well, OpenOffice v3.0 can help with that too.

Using an extension ((basically a small program)) OpenOffice can open and edit and re-save a PDF file. Not even Adobe, the company that promotes the PDF format[1] , does a good job of opening and editing PDF’s.

This is a really big deal to me because editing saved PDF’s is going to save me a lot of time editing settlement documents and various pleadings.

Update

I wrote the above about a month ago while I gave OpenOffice 3.0 a shot.  It won’t install on my Vista laptop but works great on my XP desktop.  I’ve reverted to OpenOffice 2.4 on the laptop while I wait for a fix.  OpenOffice 2.4 is still free, but it won’t open MS Office 2007 formats (which not everyone is using anyhow) and cannot edit PDFs.

1. I know that’s redundant. [↩]

In a prior post I talked about the top five PDRater.com features that make your life easier.  But, when was the last time you thought about your office staff, hmm?

How can you make their job easier?  Well, the good news is you don’t have to, I’ve given you all the tools to make your office run faster and more efficiently, saving you time and money.

1. 

   Top 5

   MPN’s.  Medical Provider Network lists, complete with logins and passwords.  Whether you’re on the applicant or defense side, your staff is going to need access to these lists.  You can find a doctor for your client or so you can give a list of doctors to opposing counsel.

2. EAMS DWC to ADJ Number Search Engine. Chances are you’ve got cases with more than one “legacy” Board file number.  With this search engine, you can search for the corresponding EAMS ADJ numbers.  And, you can search for as many Board (or ADJ) numbers as you want at the same time, just by separating them with commas.
3. EAMS Office Search Engine. When your staff is filling out documents for you, they’re going to need to know the correct name and address for all the parties.  When they need to call opposing counsel, they can also look up the phone number with this search engine.
4. EAMS Document Type and Document Title Search Engine. Your staff needs a quick way to find the exact EAMS document type and EAMS document title for every document cover sheet getting filed with the Board.  Sure, they could comb through four or five pages of 3 point font on the Board’s form.  Or, better yet, they could search and find exactly the document type and title they need.
5. EAMS Body Part Codes. There are 62 different body part codes in the EAMS system.  There’s no need to keep the EAMS chart on hand, just tell your staff what body part you want on the form and have them look it up on this website.
6. DWC / WCAB  / EAMS Forms. There are now more than 130 different forms, new and “legacy”, available on the DIR website.  There’s no reason your staff should have to scroll up or down looking for the right form.  Type in a few characters and get a direct link right to the exact form you need.
7. Date Calculator. Sure, everyone in your office could have their own date wheel.  In my experience, date wheels and money charts are two of the most commonly swiped office aides right after the good stapler and scotch tape.  With a date calculator built into the website, all of your staff can quickly and easily calculate the number of days between two dates or what day it will be in a certain number of days.

So, there you have the top 5, er 7, PDRater.com website search engine and workers’ compensation calculators your staff is going to benefit from using.  Registration for this site is quick, easy, and free.  Save your staff some time and frustration by having them register for this website and try out the calculators, search engines, and links.