XFER Blog

Thanks to cloud computing technology, many businesses are taking advantage of having a mobile workforce by allowing their staff to work from home. Working from home can be beneficial by making workers more productive, saving employees' time and money from commuting, and increasing worker satisfaction, but how can you know for sure if work is really getting done?

Do you have what it takes to win the annual National Texting Championship? 17-year-old Austin Wierschke has the texting speed, dexterity, and accuracy to be crowned the most recent texting champion, an accomplishment accredited to sending 500 texts a day for training! This is a major achievement for young Alex, but does it translate to a hirable skill?

One of the biggest time wasters we all face is sorting through our email inbox. This is a tedious task made worse because you have to sort through emails from the same sources every day, like newsletters and social media updates. Here's a tip to help you better organize your incoming Gmail messages.

Since 1995, eBay has become an online giant, and an obvious choice in the ecommerce industry. Buyers and sellers have taken to this online platform as a convenient solution to acquire things they want, and sell things they don't.

The latest news in office technology movements is the shift toward BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) environments; in which employees are bringing their own mobile devices to work. All the cool kids are doing it, but should you? Before you follow the trend and allow your employees to bring their devices to work, you should consider these risks.

As commonplace as cellphones are today, it's hard to imagine that there was a time in the 1980's when this technology was first introduced and the benefits had to be explained. Here's an old cellphone commercial from Motorola about "the booming industry of cellular radio telephones." Times sure have changed!

 

As your company grows and enters into more competitive markets, your ability to access reliable and accurate data is of the utmost importance. Ginni Rometty; CEO, president, and chair of IBM, shared her insight on data management in her speech on October 2nd at the IBM InterConnect 2013 event. Here are three benefits of successful data management according to Rometty.

What are you terrified of? Spiders? Heights? Deep water? Financial problems? Shockingly, the greatest anxiety among humans is public speaking, even ranking above the fear of death! But, for some people, these things would be readily faced in lieu of their greatest fear; being cell phone-less! Oh, the horror!

Recently, Adobe sent out e-mails and letters to users notifying everyone of a security breach. "The attackers may have obtained access to your Adobe ID and encrypted password." The obvious question here is, "How do I protect myself and my business from such attacks?" The unfortunate answer is you can't, but you can marginalize the impact by taking some common sense measures.

Overshadowed by the new iPad Air and iPad Mini announcement, on October 22nd Apple launched its new Operating System OS X Mavericks. This new OS is sleek, efficient, and free. Wait, a free Apple product? Really? Yes really. Is this too good to be true? Let's take a look at this new OS and find out.

One year ago, Microsoft took a big gamble when they released Windows 8 with a new user interface that strayed from their successful twenty year-old template. Throughout the year, Microsoft has been listening to user feedback and they have recently addressed the biggest issues with Windows 8.1, the first major upgrade to Microsoft's newest OS.

As a small business, your goal should not only be to survive, but to thrive. Many times, small businesses try to cut costs by not purchasing essential equipment and services. Unfortunately, because of its cost, technology ends up on the backburner of the priority list. Don't cut corners. Here are seven tech assets you need to invest in.

With all the personal information users entrust to Facebook, it's no surprise that scammers are also on Facebook, often posing as friends. When using Facebook, you will need to be aware of this scam in order to keep your personal information safe. Here are four characteristics of a fake Facebook profile that you should consider before confirming a friendship.

Improving your computer's startup time is a great way to get more productivity out of your work day. Studies have shown that people are most productive during the early hours of the day; therefore, you don't want to waste your best hours waiting for a PC to load. Here are three easy tips you can do to improve your PC's boot up time.

First introduced by Xerox back in the 1964, the fax machine, or Long Distance Xerography as it was called then, was the hottest office productivity tool of its day. This new technology saved workers from having to send documents via mail, which dramatically improved office communications. Nearly fifty years later, and the fax machine has become a hindrance to office productivity.

You can connect to over 2.7 billion people over the Internet, but you probably shouldn't. There are many people on the Internet with bad intentions, along with several websites that can harm your business. With a Unified Threat Management (UTM) tool, you can protect your business by filtering out the worst of the web.

Remember when a family's home had only one phone line and someone else would pick up the phone in the middle of a call? There would be a click, a pause, the caller would then ask, "Is someone on the other line?" A hasty hang-up click would then follow. With VoIP, you can listen in on phone calls without being detected!

What would happen if your business experienced a disaster and your sensitive information was erased? If you don't have a business continuity plan in place that includes data backup and recovery, then it's highly unlikely your company will survive. To protect your business, you will want to consider and choose one of these three backup solutions.

You've seen them around everywhere. Every time you watch TV, look at a poster, listen to the news, or have a conversation with a teenager, you'll be exposed to the term "hashtag". What are hashtags exactly? What do they do? Why should you care about them? How can they help your business? #readmoretofindout

Mobile devices give you the ability to always be connected with the virtual world. It may seem like this is great for productivity because you feel like more work is getting done; but could it be that constant connectivity is wearing us down? In light of the stresses caused from being connected, it's good to unplug and recharge your brain.