Directive Blogs

Windows 10 has long played nice with the Android platform, but did you know that there is a way that you can actually use the same apps you would find on your mobile device on your PC? For this week's tip, we'll go over how you can enable this capability.

If you need a reason to upgrade to Android 11, it comes with a highly useful selection of options when you access the menu that appears when you hold down the power button on your device. However, you have the option to add much more value to this menu. To do this, you’ll need to make a small investment in an automation-driven third-party application known as Tasker. 

The Android platform has various tools and applications available to assist users in keeping themselves organized and productive. One of these applications, Google Keep, offers particularly significant benefits. For this week’s tip, we’ll be going over some ways that you can use Google Keep to help “keep” track of the cornucopia of important information you need to process and retain.

While you probably aren’t super enthusiastic about loaning out your mobile device right now, you may not have ever been. After all, you’re effectively handing over a bunch of personal data bundled into a convenient package. However, Android has had a feature that makes it substantially more secure to share your device for some time now.

Email—it’s a business tool that we all use and rely on, but (if we’re being honest) it can be a pain to manage properly. Unfortunately, this can also depreciate the value of the solution to its users. To help prevent these problems, we wanted to share a few tips to assist you with your email management.

Google is the standard for online searches. It seems to be as simple as can be. Think of a question, type it in, get an answer. However, not many people likely know just how specific you can make these Google searches with just a few details. Let’s go over how to use Google most effectively as you search the Internet.

If you’ve been mostly working from a laptop these last few months, you’re probably noticing that it’s a little harder to be as productive with only one screen, especially if you were used to having two at the office. If you’ve already looked into getting a second screen for your laptop, but your laptop doesn’t have a port, you aren’t actually out of luck!

Screenshots can be one of the most effective ways to share information, as it gives the people you are communicating to first-hand knowledge of what you’re seeing. Of course, different platforms have different means of capturing a screenshot. Let’s go over these methods to ensure that you can do so efficiently and easily.

Every business should consider its security one of its top priorities, and with so much business now happening digitally, cybersecurity is a major part of that. Take, for instance, the heightened importance of email in the extended remote workforce. While email is a great business tool, it can also be an avenue that a cybercriminal uses to attack. So that you can better protect your business, we’re discussing some basic email security steps for this week’s tip.

Considering how much as we rely on our mobile devices each day, it comes as no surprise how stressful the “LOW BATTERY” notification can be. While you might assume that it only seems to appear earlier and earlier in the day, there are in fact a variety of conditions that cause your device to die much faster. That’s why we wanted to share a few tips to help you understand what is happening to your battery, and what you can do to manage its longevity a little better.

As capable as the Android platform is, there are a few significant shortcomings that can negatively influence the user’s experience. Here, we wanted to offer a few tips to help you eliminate or avoid these shortcomings as you work with your mobile device.

Social media platforms—like Facebook and Instagram—are a great place to communicate with people, as many political campaigns are now taking advantage of. With an election on the horizon, political advertisements abound on these platforms. Of course, not everyone wants their feeds cluttered with these ads… especially if these ads don’t align to their own politics.

As your employees go about their workdays, it is important that they do so with the resources they’ll need to remain optimally productive… and that these resources are in the best condition for them to do so. While this is often an overlooked consideration, this means that their computer needs to be clean and fully functional. Let’s go over a few best practices to follow when it comes to keeping a workstation clean enough to work optimally.

Chances are you’re still spending a lot of time at home, and a lot of that time is being spent on the Internet. With so many still working remotely, and many educational institutions continuing remote learning, the strength of a household’s Wi-Fi signal is going to be crucial. We wanted to offer you some tips to help you maximize the signal strength of your router.

If your business is like most, you and your team likely rely on a schedule to keep your processes moving along efficiently… while also ensuring that everyone has something to work on at any time. However, this is often easier said than done, which is why there are now cloud-based software options that make your scheduling efforts a little smarter.

If you’re trying to productively work from home, what you use and how you use it are equally important considerations. To assist you, we felt it would be helpful to share a few best practices for each variable, so that you might be able to boost your remote productivity.

When creating an office’s network, wireless functionality has become a necessary element to include. Of course, this is usually easier said than done, as wireless signals can be notoriously persnickety. That’s why we’re offering some tips to help you make the most of your business’ wireless network setup.

Everyone knows how to do a Google Search, right? Go to the site, type whatever it is you’re looking for into the search bar, and you’re off to the races. Fewer people are aware, however, of the ways that you can help Google narrow its search a bit. Let’s go over a few handy Google cheat codes that can make your search results more precise.

Chances are, you not only have a smartphone, but that smartphone is also currently within arm’s reach. With these devices playing an increasingly important role in our personal and professional lives, these devices have proven to be a lucrative target for hackers to pursue. This week, our tip is meant to help you spot the warning signs that an application is hiding an attack.

As a smartphone gets older, it’s battery will start to degrade. For years it was as simple as replacing the battery on the device, but over the past several years, no major smartphone manufacturer builds devices with removable batteries. Fortunately for users, the Android OS has made it a point to build power settings into the software that provides them the ability to manipulate how power is used on the phone. Today, we will take a look at some of the settings you can use to keep your device running longer.