CrossCheck Blog

How do you get consumers to change their habits, preferences or even tastes? Well, if you have ever tried dieting, then you know how difficult it is to change a habit. Here in “wine country” where CrossCheck is located (Sonoma County, Calif.) we have seen some subtle changes in consumer preferences for our preferred beverage: wine.

A J.D. Power U.S. Tech Choice Study shows that consumers are placing greater emphasis on the inclusion of onboard technologies when they shop for new cars. According to the study, “there has been an 11% increase in the proportion of consumers who say the lack of the latest technology features is one of the most important reasons why they avoided a specific model or brand.”

Now that humanity (as financed by the United States) has visited every major planet in the solar system, it turns out that the endeavor teaches us a great deal about the future of the auto repair business.

We’ve come a long way since the Flintstones drove around in a stone-manufactured, foot mobile contraption. If Fred and Barney were racing around town today, they would undoubtedly be in favor of tire improvements to ensure a smoother, safer ride. That being said, here’s a look at the future of tires. Some are coming down the pipeline, and some that have already arrived. The shortlist below is not all-inclusive but highlights those items most likely to impact sales.

Satoshi Nakamoto released Version 0.1 of the application underlying Bitcoin on January 3, 2008. It wasn’t really software at that point in time; it didn’t have a user interface or even a DOS-like command line. To run it, you had to use Visual Studio on a Windows machine. Nevertheless, the functionality was “remarkably complete,” and the first online transaction took place six days later. To make his project open-source, Nakamoto put it on SourceForge and asked other developers to suggest contributions to the core technology. Until mid-2010, Nakamoto controlled which of these suggestions would make it into the official version of the Bitcoin software. Then that responsibility passed to Gavin Andresen.

Too many apps on your smartphone? There’s an app for that. And why not? There seems to be an app for everything these days, but according to PC Magazine, right now only seven of the top 100 have anything to do with health.

With more old cars on the road than ever before and with new ones sporting elaborate powertrains run by onboard computers, it makes sense that many dealerships rely upon their service department to drive profits. And to know where things may be headed in your repair bays, we might take a look at how the cars are put together in the first place:

Bitcoin Value in U.S. Dollars at Time of Publishing (12/16/14) Everyone’s heard of Bitcoin and everyone suspects that it’s cool – but is it cool in the way that smoking is cool, or is it cool in the way that new clothes are cool? After all, the whole point behind the digital currency is to create something independent of governments and central banks, and to create a way that people can make payments as anonymously as cash, which gives it something of an outlaw aroma.

As attitudes towards dental care evolve, dentists can adopt new technologies to drive demand and to take advantage of changing sources of payment. New challenges from every demographic – children, Millennials, Generation X and Baby Boomers – require proactive planning in your practice.

As a busy office manager, the last thing you want to do is get bogged down with the minutia of invoicing!