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XFER Blog

XFER Blog

XFER has been serving the Livonia area since 1994, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, computer support, and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses.

Tip of the Week: Your Guide to Google Apps’ Helpful Android Shortcuts

Tip of the Week: Your Guide to Google Apps’ Helpful Android Shortcuts

The Android operating system offers a litany of additional features and shortcuts in most applications… all you have to do is long-press an application’s icon to pull up a contextual menu of shortcuts. Naturally, Google’s applications are no exception.

Let’s review some of Google’s application capabilities as they appear in these shortcut menus.

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Tip of the Week: How to Share Large Files with Google Drive

Tip of the Week: How to Share Large Files with Google Drive

Google Drive is an extremely useful cloud storage and file sharing platform that many businesses use as a part of the Google Workspace productivity suite, or as a stand alone cloud storage solution. We thought it would be useful to give you a couple of ways to use Drive to share large files.

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AI Negatively Impacts the Environment, and All for Bad Advice

AI Negatively Impacts the Environment, and All for Bad Advice

You may have noticed the recent attempts by Google to provide AI-generated answers to your queries. You might not immediately understand why AI is such a prevalent thing in arbitrary technology like search engines, but we assure you that there is a good reason for it—a better user experience—even if it does come with mixed results.

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Update Your Chrome Browser, But Be Wary of Fake Alerts

Update Your Chrome Browser, But Be Wary of Fake Alerts

Google Chrome has been pushing a lot of important updates over the last few weeks. Fortunately, updating Chrome is pretty seamless, and it’s important that users do so. Users also need to be wary of fake Chrome errors that insist on installing malware. You don’t want to fall for this scam!

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Tip of the Week: How to Set Your Google Alerts

Tip of the Week: How to Set Your Google Alerts

Setting up Google Alerts is a useful way to stay informed about topics that interest you. This tool allows you to receive notifications whenever new content related to your chosen keywords appears online. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to set up Google Alerts effectively.

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Use Google Sheets for Easier Table Management

Use Google Sheets for Easier Table Management

Everyone should soon have access to a very handy feature in Google Sheets that helps close the gap between Sheets and its rival software, Microsoft Excel.

This feature? Simple table conversions, complete with advanced organization features.

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Tip of the Week: Use Forms to Populate a Sheet in Google

Tip of the Week: Use Forms to Populate a Sheet in Google

Utilizing a form to gather data for your business offers myriad benefits, including insights into customer impressions, service needs, and employee feedback for collaborative decision-making. However, the challenge arises when it's time to consolidate responses—unless you're proficient with the available tools.

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Use Google Docs Templates to Speed Up the Document Creation Process

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If you regularly use Google Docs, you may already be familiar with templates. They can be a quick and efficient way to create certain types of documents that you often use. With several prebuilt into Docs already, you might wonder if you can make your own, and it turns out you can!

Let’s discuss how you can use Google Docs templates and how to make your own. First, we’ll look at what types of elements you might need to implement for your templates, and then we’ll get into the details of how to do it!

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“Chromebook Churn” is Creating Challenges for Schools to Deal With

“Chromebook Churn” is Creating Challenges for Schools to Deal With

In recent years, educational institutions have widely adopted the regular use of laptops in the classroom, and with budgets being a pressing concern for many of these institutions, the cost-sensitive nature of Chromebooks make them an excellent option… at least, that would be the assumption. However, this is not the case in the slightest, as the software that powers these devices regularly reaches its end of life, despite the hardware being perfectly capable of more.

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Tip of the Week: How to Download Images from a Google Doc

Tip of the Week: How to Download Images from a Google Doc

Google Docs has been a worthy competitor to the ubiquitous Microsoft Word since the search engine giant launched the service in 2006. Since then, it’s been used by personal accounts and businesses as a fantastic alternative to the Microsoft Office suite. Google was able to beat Microsoft to the punch with a nearly fully-featured, browser-based document editor that allowed incredibly easy collaboration and sharing capabilities. However, there’s one little hang-up that people often run into when using Google Docs, and we’re going to show you how to overcome it.

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Put Your YouTube on Repeat

Put Your YouTube on Repeat

Have you ever wanted to put a YouTube video on repeat for an inordinately long amount of time, perhaps looping on a kiosk or on a conference room tv in the background? There are several ways to do this, including a feature built into YouTube itself and third-party websites. Let’s take a look at both options.

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Client-End Encryption for Gmail and Calendar is a Major Improvement

Client-End Encryption for Gmail and Calendar is a Major Improvement

Have you ever considered the importance of client-side encryption for your Gmail and your Calendar? If you implement it, you can create meetings and send or receive emails that have been encrypted before they are sent to Google’s servers. Organizations using Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Education Standard, and Education Plus can expect this client-side encryption tool, but personal users will be left in the dust.

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Tip of the Week: Organize Gmail Contacts Into Groups

Tip of the Week: Organize Gmail Contacts Into Groups

Have you ever tried using an email group? You might find that it helps you stay organized and efficient. Instead of sending a copy of an email to each and every recipient, you can basically create a “forum” of sorts to make collaboration easier than ever. You can do this through the groups feature in Gmail.

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Tip of the Week: How to Create Multiple Google Calendars

Tip of the Week: How to Create Multiple Google Calendars

Your Google Calendar can be a gateway to productivity when it’s set up appropriately, and one way you can do so is to implement additional calendars to help you manage your day-to-day obligations. Let’s go over why you might consider using multiple Google calendars and how you can set them all up.

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Everyone is on Page One with Google’s New Continuous Scrolling Search Results

Everyone is on Page One with Google’s New Continuous Scrolling Search Results

Most people look at only the first page of Google when they are trying to find results; anything seen past the first page is looked at as inferior, inaccurate, or possibly even dangerous. However, Google’s new plans for the search engine will put an end to this bias through the use of a continuous scroll feature.

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Discussing the Modern Search Engine, Part 2

Discussing the Modern Search Engine, Part 2

In our last article, we started to tell you about the search engine and outlined Google's complete predominance of the space. This time around, we will take a closer look at a couple of other search engines that you may or may not have heard of, and how they stack up to Google Search.

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Discussing the Modern Search Engine, Part 1

Discussing the Modern Search Engine, Part 1

Google is a tool that everyone uses to varying degrees, but the reality is that Google is but one search engine. There are others out there, and while they perform similar functions, there is a reason why Google is synonymous with web browsing. Let’s take a look at why Google is so popular, as well as how it works to give you the best search results.

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Many Businesses are Adopting Passwordless Authentication—Including Google

Many Businesses are Adopting Passwordless Authentication—Including Google

Passwords used to be the law of the land, but in a world where passwords are more at risk of threats than ever before, people have turned to passwordless solutions. In fact, one of the biggest tech companies out there—Google—recently took steps toward passwordless authentication which we think is pretty darn important.

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Manage Permissions in Google Productivity Apps

Manage Permissions in Google Productivity Apps

Depending on your business’ level of use for Google Apps, you may or may not have them set up to allow for integration with various other types of services. If you do, however, grant other programs permission to access and use your Google Drive, you should know how to manage these permissions. That’s what this blog is all about today.

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Tip of the Week: Translating a Gmail Message

Tip of the Week: Translating a Gmail Message

There are times when you might receive an email written in another language. Even if it’s unlikely, it helps to be able to translate a message for the rare time when you might receive one, particularly if your organization occasionally conducts business beyond your country’s borders. Let’s go over how you can use Gmail’s built-in translation functionality.

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XFER Communications, Inc.
31478 Industrial Road Suite 200
Livonia, Michigan 48150