31478 Industrial Road Suite 200, Livonia, Michigan 48150 sales@xfer.com

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.

Be Sure to Count the Costs of the Cloud

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Cloud computing is a hot business technology. Research firm Gartner surveyed businesses worldwide and found that 60% have increased their budgets for cloud services through 2014. Gartner also predicts that the cloud services market will increase 18.5% this year. Are you looking to migrate over to the cloud? Here are a few considerations before your business goes cloud crazy.

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Could Bitcoins become the Next World Currency?

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The Internet has given us many new and exciting ways to transact business. The newest frontier is in regards to a virtual currency called Bitcoins that is unregulated and accepted by Internet users worldwide. Bitcoins may be too much of a novelty for your business to take seriously, but that does not discredit it as an interesting investment opportunity.

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Tip: How To Set Your Homepage on Your Web Browser

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Is your web browser's home page looking drab and boring? Do you wish that you could change it to something fresh and exciting but you just don't know how to do it? Introducing Home Page Settings! By using Home Page Settings, you can give your Web Browser that fresh look you have always wanted, and the best part is that it's free!

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Critical Updates on the Way for Windows, Office, and IE

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Microsoft will be dishing out multiple security updates this week, including four critical patches for Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, and SharePoint Server. Critical updates are considered Microsoft's highest threat rating, so installing these patches is important.

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Meet Google Spanner: The Largest, Single Database Ever Created

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The evolution of Google from a search engine company renting a garage, to one of the largest companies on the planet, is a story that can truly boggle the mind. One cause of Google's growth is their investment in developing new technology. This is the case with the Google Spanner, which is a new technology designed to manage Google's growth.

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Don’t Underestimate the Hackers

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In 2011, Ponemon Research surveyed 583 U.S. businesses and found that 90% of respondents reported that their company's computers had been breached at least once by hackers within the past year; 77% of these companies felt like they were attacked multiple times within the same year. If your SMB does not have any protection from hackers, then your sensitive data is at serious risk.

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An Old Internet Explorer Can Harm Your PC

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If you never connected your PC to the internet, then you could get away with not updating any of your software. Do to the changing nature of the internet, new security threats are constantly attacking your computer. Internet browsers are your door to the internet and require constant updating in order to keep your PC protected from these threats.

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The Popularity of the Fax Machine

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It always feels a bit peculiar to come across a fax machine still being used in the modern office. With all of our digital advancements, the fax machine should have gone the way of the floppy disk. Contrary to common sense, it is estimated that there are 131 million fax machines still in operation around the world.

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Taking a Look at Google’s Data Centers

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Have you ever stopped and wondered where the internet is housed? Maybe all the websites are on a skyscraper-sized router? Maybe the internet all fits inside your computer? Most of the information is actually stored in data center facilities all over the world, and the sheer size and complexity of these centers will boggle your mind.

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Improve Employee Productivity with Universal Threat Management

The concept behind company time is simple enough: you are employed, and therefore expected to do whatever you agreed upon while "on the clock." To be fair, you are given a few breaks to attend to personal matters; yet, as easy to grasp as this seems, the average employee wastes two hours of company time per day on the internet.

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Free Up Bandwidth with Internet Monitoring

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Internet bandwidth is a precious resource, and the amount your office can use is limited to whatever internet service package your company is signed up for. If your office is running short on bandwidth, then you will need to upgrade to a bigger package, which will be expensive. Before you spend money on upgrading, you should consider internet monitoring.

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New Years Resolution Help: Spend Less Time on the Internet

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Are you compiling your New Year's resolution list and looking for some help to achieve your goals? If one of your resolutions is to spend less time goofing off on the internet and more time being productive, then we want to share with you a helpful app called Freedom that will help achieve your resolution.

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Take, Edit, and Share Screenshots with Lightshot

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Taking screenshots of your desktop is infinitely useful (including when you get a strange error that you can't seem to repeat when IT is standing by).. Although the process of taking a screenshot has always felt a bit more cumbersome than it needs to be due to the additional steps of opening editing software, formatting the image, and saving the file. Lightshot is a solution that simplifies the entire screenshot process.

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4 Tips to Shop Securely Online

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The 2012 holiday online shopping season is shaping up to be the biggest yet. Harris Interactive conducted a survey regarding this holiday season, and found that 51% of Americans plan on shopping online this year. Everybody has different reasons to shop online, 71% of respondents thought they could find better deals, and 31% want to simply avoid the crowds.

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Increase Security with Multi-Factor Identification

Using a strong password with complex combinations of letters and numbers will go a long way in protecting your account, but passwords provide only one level of protection against hackers. Additional levels of security can be added with multi-factor authentication. This is the best protection available for your internet accounts, and major technology companies have recently made this a reality for the public.

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File Sharing Options to Consider


It's the information age. If you are always on the go, or you work as a member of a team, it helps if your work is accessible remotely. The ability to have relevant files on hand is nice and at times can be essential to the welfare of your business. Below are a few cloud-based options that could offer you or your company a solution for your remote file access needs.

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3 Handy Tools to Remember Your Passwords, Part 2

Last time, we spoke about password security, we went over the importance of using strong passwords to avoid identity theft. In part two, we will discuss three easy password solutions that can help you manage all of your different passwords.

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Know These 4 Intruders that Threaten your Business

In order to best serve their clients, companies need to have a comprehensive program in place to help them defend their systems from malware attacks on their company's infrastructure. These attacks can have a devastating effect on a business's continuity, so having an appreciation for exactly what types of adversaries your company is up against is important. There are several types of potential intruders that you should be aware of.

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Travel With Free Wi-Fi

Everybody likes the free goodies in a hotel room, tiny shampoo bottles, coupons to nearby restaurants, and HBO top the list. Wi-Fi however, our favorite goodie, sometimes fails to make the complimentary goodie list. It seems a little messed up to us, that hotels (the place you work and sleep) charge you for Wi-Fi while Burger King gives it away for free, but we have found a Wi-Fi loophole to help you out.

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Prevent your Web Browser from Storing Passwords

For sites you need to log into often, having your browser remember your password can save you time logging in, especially if you are using secure passwords that you might need to look up otherwise. There are circumstances where you might want to manage what personal information gets stored in your web browser.

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