Tech Minutes

If you use an iPhone, iPad, or any other Apple device, you’ve probably used iMessage. iMessage is the popular built-in messaging app. It’s Apple’s version of the text message, but it’s packed with great features that iPhone users have grown very fond of. We looked around online for ways to access your iMessage in Windows, but only found workarounds that compromise your security.

We’re going to discuss these workarounds, but we highly recommend you do NOT attempt them. These are two of the most common procedures people have come up with to try to get iMessage to work on a Windows 10 PC, but both put you at a security risk.

iMessage is one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, and iPhone/iPad users get a nice, seamless integration across all their Apple products. With so many iPhone users using Microsoft Windows 10 PCs, we thought that there must be a way to send and receive iMessages in Windows 10. There are, but it comes with a lot of risks.

Mobile devices have countless uses, all of which enable users to get the most out of them. But what if all of your efforts at finding the best applications for the job are wasted on finding a fraudulent app on the Google Play Store? Believe it or not, the Google Play Store has its fair share of malware available for download in all types of disguises. Here are a few tips to help you avoid installing them in the first place.

You can never know whether or not that app you just downloaded to your smartphone can expose your data or identity to risk. While Google Play and the iTunes store certainly put efforts into ensuring that users can safely browse their app stores, it’s unlikely that they can find every single malicious app out there before it infects someone’s device. Therefore, you need to consider the following measures to ensure that you don’t put your business at risk by downloading unsecure apps.

Collaboration is a key part of business today, which has led to many developers and providers entering the business of collaboration. These developers are in deep competition with each other, each trying to update their offering to be better than the others’. Recently, Facebook Workplace, Slack, and Google’s Gmail each received collaboration-boosting updates.

Oh no! You start slapping your pockets, already knowing what you’re about to confirm--your mobile device is missing. With the reliance we have on these devices, losing yours is enough to send you into a relative panic. However, this panic may be avoided by implementing a reliable solution specifically for locating a lost device.

Today’s fast-paced work environment demands multitasking and juggling various projects at once. Thankfully, there’s a lot of great technologies designed to make workloads more manageable. If you’ve not yet looked into utilizing automation apps for your business, you may be surprised to learn how they can improve efficiency.

To summarize, automation apps are used to automatically carry out an action that’s triggered when a user completes another action. Automation apps actually vary by different strengths, based on the other applications that currently function with the automator. By using apps to automate several of the mundane tasks throughout the workday, you can end up saving your company time and money by providing users with more control over their work routine.

Here are three automation apps of different strengths that are worth looking into for any company valuing productivity and efficiency.

If This Then That (IFTTT)This is a simple automation app that’s fairly easy to set up and compatible with 320 web services. IFTTT uses a “recipe” that the user enters to select a trigger action along with the responsive action (if [trigger] happens, then [response] happens).

IFTTT can be downloaded directly from its website, and it includes mobile versions for Android and iOS. One advantage of IFTTT is its large user community that shares recipes with other users. You may be able to find something useful just by scanning the available recipes like, receiving a notification when a new subscriber is added to an email list, or incorporating receipts and orders into a single spreadsheet.

The Internet of Things is constantly growing. Seemingly every commercially-available product now has a corresponding app or some sort of connectivity to the web. As this entity grows bigger still, you begin to see things that have very little intrinsic value coming with Internet connectivity.

Implementing proper IT solutions is challenging for the average SMB, and it’s difficult without the aid of a proper IT department. Organizations that can’t afford a full in-house IT department sometimes resort to less savory methods of managing their technology, which can be dangerous for business continuity, data storage compliance, and security.

We’ve all run into the trouble of keeping our smartphone’s battery preserved for as long as possible. Many people think that the apps themselves are what bogs down the battery and drains its charge, but we’re here to tell you that this is not the case. Instead, let’s determine what really drains your device’s battery.

Mobile exploits are just as common as those found on legitimate operating systems like Windows, but many people just don’t understand this simple fact. However, this hasn’t stopped some folks from being cautious when using their devices. The latest exploit making the rounds, which takes advantage of the iPhone’s Siri or Android’s Google Now, will leave you speechless.

As a business owner, you might have the sudden and inexplicable urge to creep on (track) your competitors to get a feel for their prices and services. With these six apps, you can make this job a little bit easier by seeing what others have to say about your competitors, including what they are saying about you.

If you use Google Chrome as your browser of choice, you know that Chrome’s extensions provide a certain level of versatility. Basically, they’re add-ons to your browser, which can perform a number of functions. They’re mostly used for enriching your browsing experience or adding new features to your browser that might not be available on other platforms. Here are four useful browser extensions to help you get the most out of Chrome.

With computers that have seen a lot of use, one of the biggest reasons a machine underperforms is because the hard drive is full of old files and programs. Instead of manually sifting through every file and deleting something you are unsure about, you can automate the process with the help of these three free apps!

There are currently over 900,000 mobile apps available for download. There are apps available for virtually any everyday function; entertainment, education, news, weather, health, and the list goes on. Your mobile device, armed with the right apps, can be your greatest productivity tools. Here are three essential mobile apps that can enhance your business productivity.

You can do almost anything with a smartphone, except type a quick and accurate text message on a four inch screen. Even the best typist struggles with hitting the correct keys on a digital keyboard, and it doesn't help if you have a little extra mass on your fingers. A new app called Fleksy promises to cure the woes of smartphone typing.