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.

Tip of the Week: Activate These Solutions Now Before You Misplace Your Mobile Device Later

Tip of the Week: Activate These Solutions Now Before You Misplace Your Mobile Device Later

Can’t find your mobile device? If you’ve taken precautions and enabled solutions designed to track the whereabouts of your device, then you’ve got no reason to panic. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, so you’ll want to make sure you activate a phone-finding solution now (while you’ve got your device in your sights).

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Tip of the Week: Improve Email Open Rates With an Attention-Grabbing Title

Tip of the Week: Improve Email Open Rates With an Attention-Grabbing Title

It’s safe to say that nobody enjoys their email inbox getting clogged with messages. Unfortunately, communicating by email is a standard part of doing business. Of course, in order for these emails to communicate their message, they must first pique the interest of the recipient enough to be opened. Here is a guide to crafting email subject lines that get readers to open them.

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Tip of the Week: Get Rid of Those Pesky Ads on Your Windows 10 Lock Screen

Tip of the Week: Get Rid of Those Pesky Ads on Your Windows 10 Lock Screen

Do you have Windows 10 on your workstation or PC? You’ve probably realized that it’s a pretty sweet operating system. Still, there’s a reason why so many people have been bothered by it, and it’s because of its practically omnipresent attempts to advertise to consumers.

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Tip of the Week: How to Avoid Oversharing on Social Media

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Social media, as wonderful a tool for connecting and communicating as it is, does have its dangers. Fortunately, these risks may be mitigated through careful deliberation and pragmatic posting habits, but only if you know what they are. What follows are some easy habits to encourage a heightened state of security both digitally and in the physical world.

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Tip of the Week: 3 Ways to Take Full Advantage of Google Drive

b2ap3_thumbnail_drive_tips_400.jpgGoogle Drive is a great way to get work done. It provides several applications that are similar in nature to Microsoft Office, like a word processor, spreadsheet software, and a presentation maker. Just like any other type of software, Drive has keyboard shortcuts and other tricks that can be leveraged for more productivity. Here are some of our favorites.

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Tip of the Week: How to Set Your Browser to Automatically Refresh Itself

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Have you ever been in a situation where you have to continuously hit the refresh button in your browser? Maybe you’re waiting for an online sale to go live, or you’re waiting on an online forum for a critical response. Or, maybe you’re just waiting for an important email. Either way, manually refreshing your browser multiple times can be both annoying and inefficient. We’ll show you how you can refresh it automatically.

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Tip of the Week: 3 Ways to Be Productive When Your Internet Connection Fails

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Modern businesses are reliant on certain parts of their infrastructure to keep operations functioning. For example, if your building’s electricity were to go down, what would you do? What about if you lost Internet access? Would your business be able to keep your employees busy, or would the downtime experienced be enough to cause panic?

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Tip of the Week: How to Know When Your Technology Needs to Be Replaced

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Your business takes advantage of several different types of technology every day, but there comes a time when your tech needs to either be upgraded or replaced with better tools. This is part of the natural order of things; no technology solution can (or should) last forever, but if you don’t catch issues before they become major problems, you could be putting your data at the risk of hardware failure, software hiccups, or even hacking attacks.

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Tip of the Week: 4 Google Chromecast Features that May Surprise You

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Google is known for coming up with fun new technologies that change the way society consumes entertainment and performs their day-to-day responsibilities. One of Google’s best new gadgets is the Google Chromecast, which can change the way you view media and share content while both at home and in the office.

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Tip of the Week: How to Make an Animated Image From Your Favorite YouTube Video

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GIFs. What are they? If you’ve spent any time perusing the Internet, you’ve definitely come across a GIF or two. Essentially, a GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is an animated picture that loops a few seconds of a video clip (without playing any audio). In addition to GIFs being fun, they can serve as a great way to enhance digital communications. How can you take advantage of GIFs?

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Tip of the Week: How to Access Multiple Gmail Accounts On Your Android Device

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If you have an Android smartphone, you know that the device is closely tied to your own personal Google account. As such, in order to get the most out of your Android device, you should take advantage of its seamless functionality with Google applications. This includes making sure that your Gmail account is properly set up on your device. We’ll walk you through how to add additional Gmail accounts to Android’s Gmail app.

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Tip of the Week: 7 Tips to Extend the Life of Your Android’s Battery

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One experience shared by every mobile device user is batteries losing power faster than they’d like. Until someone invents a battery that never again needs to be recharged, this struggle will always be real. Here are seven ways to make your mobile device's battery last longer.

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Tip of the Week: 4 Social Taboos Smartphone Users Should Never Break

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Cellphone etiquette goes hand-in-hand with common sense. Here are four cellphone etiquette tips that every device owner should know.

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Tip of the Week: 4 Common Email Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

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Email is a staple in offices around the world, but many organizations are finding it easier than ever to make simple mistakes that can be easily avoided with proper training procedures. It’s a best practice to ensure that your team is adequately trained on how to efficiently use your chosen email client to its maximum potential. Here are four of the most common email mistakes that the average employee can make, and how they can easily be avoided in the future.

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Tip of the Week: How to Save Your Keyboard After Spilling Your Drink On It

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You know that you shouldn’t keep a beverage near your computer, but how good are you at actually abiding by this best practice? Due to the busyness of our modern lives, it’s likely that most office workers eat more meals at their computer than away from it. Inevitably, this will lead to a drink spilt on your keyboard, which can put you in a rather sticky situation.

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Tip of the Week: My Company Device Has Been Lost or Stolen, Now What?

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Mobile devices are one of the hottest items for thieves to target. According to reports from Consumer Reports and LoJack, 2013 saw the theft of two million laptops and three million handsets. What this means for you is that having your mobile device stolen is probably a lot more likely than you would think.

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Tip of the Week: Sharing Files Between 2 PCs is as Easy as Dragging and Dropping

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What’s the best way to share files between your different personal devices and computers? It turns out that you can share files over your home’s network, and you don’t have to be an IT technician to do it.

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Tip of the Week: Try the 52-17 Rule to Get the Most Productivity Out of Your Workday

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There are countless ways to boost your productivity in the office… at least, that’s what the Internet says. How do you separate the productivity champs from the chumps? It’s simple, really; just look for the tried and true methods that have been backed by thorough research. One such study, performed by Julia Gifford of Draugiem Group, claims that workers can be more productive by not trying to do as much office work as possible.

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Tip of the Week: How to Take Back Your Android Device from Bloatware

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Smartphones are filled with all sorts of nifty apps. In fact, some of the most useful applications come pre installed on the device. However, not all apps are worth your time. These unwanted applications are called “bloatware,” and can impede the device’s ability to perform to your specifications.

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Tip of the Week: Use This Security Checklist to Protect Your Network

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As a business professional, you have a responsibility to ensure that your company’s network and data is protected from hacking attacks. It can be difficult to remember to take all of the necessary precautions, but with our help, you can easily outline all of the measures that should be taken to maximize security for corporate data.

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