Business briefs

Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2009

Tidewater Dental adds dentist

Tidewater Dental announced recently the arrival of a new dentist, Todd D. Cooper.

Cooper was born, raised and educated in St. Mary's County, and graduated from the University of Mary Washington with a bachelor's degree in biology. He is a recent graduate of the University of Maryland, Baltimore College of Dental Surgery and is the 2009 recipient of the Maryland Academy of General Dentistry Award for high proficiency in clinical care and patient management.

He is a member of the American Dental Association, the Maryland State Dental Association and the Academy of General Dentistry, and was a 2009 delegate to the state association's House of Delegates. He and his wife, Vanessa, are expecting their first child in April 2010.

Tidewater Dental is at 21534 Great Mills Road in Lexington Park. It is co-owned by dentists David J. Cooper and Michael W. Owens.

Card game invented

Some card games let you win money, but this one let's you play God.

"Soaps," a game created recently by a Lexington Park computer programmer, allows two to five players to run the lives of characters on their own fictitious soap opera, with victory going to the creator of the most action-packed — and ludicrous — plot for a series.

Each character has a sex, a sexual orientation and a typecast to help determine how they go about getting married, cuckolded, injured or any of the other events that befall soap opera stars with astonishing regularity.

The game's creator, Danny Goodisman, had been working on the idea since 2001 and published it at the end of June, he said. He is selling the finished product via a Web site called The Game Crafter, that lets customers pay for a game and print out the deck of cards at home.

So far, he has been disappointed with sales. "The Maryland economy is bad. I think that that game has a problem where soap opera viewers don't buy games, and people who don't watch soap operas are turned off by the premise," he said. "Nevertheless, I do enjoy the game a lot. The game is very funny. The humor is off-color, [like a] nun who has an affair, you know, so it's very funny."

Goodisman is not a fan of soaps. Instead, he got ideas for cards by reading episode summaries, which he deemed "much more efficient" than actually sitting through the shows.

"In 40 seconds you can usually read the whole thing," he said.

"Soaps" costs $23 and is available at www.thegamecrafter.com/games/soaps.

DBED launches online tools for businesses

The Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development Secretary Christian S. Johansson announced the launch of two online tools available at www.choosemaryland.org.

The Maryland Business Connection offers businesses an online resource guide to Maryland's 23 counties and Baltimore, including information on how to access capital, do business with Maryland's federal facilities, market products and services and recruit and train employees.

In addition, DBED launched the ARRA Business Connection, which helps connect Maryland businesses with federal stimulus contracting opportunities funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and provide information on upcoming ARRA events and workshops.

Call 405-824-5549 or go to www.choosemaryland.org.