I recently got a Droid 2 and I love it!!  It took some getting used to as the battery does not last that long, and it is a bit more advanced – or as I say, complicated – than the Blackberry that I had before, but I still love it.  I did find some small tips and things that I thought I would share.  I hope it helps!!

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Verizon Codes for after you get the phone

Here’s some verizon specific codes that may help you if you if you need to check something

• #832 – test call
• #PMT (768) – make a payment
• #BAL (225) – check current balance and last payment
• #MIN (646) – check minute usage
• #DATA (3282) – check txt and pic message usage
• *611 – customer service
• *511 – gives weather and traffic in some areas
• *228 – update your Perfered Roamers List or update the software on your Phone (CDMA phones only)
• *228 80 – force update, ignore fails
• *228 99 – force seconday tower update
• *228 00 – original tower update

Voicemail

• *86 – go to voicemail
• 1 – Rewind
• 1-1 – Rewind to beginning of message
• 2 – Pause
• 3 – Fast Forward (can be used when leaving a message to get to the beep faster)
  
• 3-3 – Fast Forward to end of message
• 4 – Slower
• 5 – Envelope Info (date/time message was sent)
• 6 – Faster
• 7 – Delete Message
• 8 – Reply (only works with other Verizon Wireless Voice Mail subscribers in your own area)
• 9 – Save message
• * – Cancel/Exit
• 0 – Help
• # – Finish/Skip

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Useful Phone Tips

How to reset Droid 2

If your Motorola Droid is freezing and doing odd things then you can reset Droid to factory settings using a Android OS options or even if your device is not working and your are unable to turn it ON there is also another option to hard reset Droid phone. Lets see how to hard reset Droid to factory settings in both conditions.

NOTE: Everything that you have installed, added or imported in your device will be removed, so before performing Motorola Droid hard reset, backup your all device data. MicroSD data will not be affected by hard reset so don’t need to worry about it.

1. Reset Droid
2. Reset Droid (if Android OS is not loading)

1- Reset Droid

Step-1

Press “Home” button, press “Menu” button and then tap on “Settings”.

Step-2

Tap on “Privacy”

Step-3

Tap on “Factory data reset”

Step-4

Tap on “Reset Phone” button

Step-5

Tap on “Erase Everything” button and your are done

2- Reset Droid (if Android OS is not loading)

If there is some major problem with your device and OS is even not loading then you can use this reset method to restore your droid.

Step-1

Turn off your device.

Step-2

Press and hold “Power key” + “x” until you get a warning sign

Step-3

After this press and hold “Volume Up” + “Camera” buttons to show the recovery menu.

Step-4

When recovery menu appears select “Wipe data/factory reset” option using directional keys next to the keyboad and press “Center” button to confirm.

Step-5

Confirm the selection, wait for it to complete and reboot your device. You are done.

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So, I just got a new Droid 2 phone, and it came with a quick-guide that SUCKED to say the least.  It told me nothing about how to run the phone, and since I have never had an Iphone, I was clueless.  Here are some tips that I have since found.  I hope they help you a bit…

How to Extend Battery Life

The first thing that I noticed is that the battery does not last long at all.  I am talking charging it every day just like you have to charge a blackberry with no signal.  Here are some tips I found and learned:

- Use static wallpaper (not live wallpaper)

- Disable “Background data” (Settings -> Accounts & sync)

- Disable screen auto rotate (Settings -> Display)

- Reduce screen brightness (lower better, or use auto brightness)

- Use wifi when available, and set timeout to “never” (Settings -> Wifi -> [MENU] -> Advance -> Wi-Fi sleep policy), over a long.

- Disable Google Latitude, Loopt or any geo-location service you have running in the background. These cause the device to wakeup (cpu power), not to mention GPS usage and network IO.

- gmail filters – If you have a heavy email load on your gmail account, consider setting up filters, so there will be less data in your inbox to sync

- Remove / uninstall weather / new widgets (these widgets will periodically generate network traffic to get the state of the news / weather causing power drain).

- Do not install Labyrinth Lite, the game is leaks a reference to the accelerometer sensor, causing a constant power drain until the phone has been rebooted (exiting the app or multi-task switching does not fix this)

- Increase update times from twitter / Facebook to 1+ hours

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How do you download or create new Ringtones?

1. Begin by obtaining the clip of your selected MP3 for your Motorola DROID ring tone. This can be done by using various software.

2. Connect the Motorola ANDROID into your computer via the USB cable that came in the handset’s box.

3. A notification will pop up informing that you have connected the phone with a computer. Choose Mount. If that option does not pop up, use the notification section to change the USB settings and change it to PC.

4. Open the drive on you handset and create a new folder and name it as “ringtones” (all lower case).

5. Copy the ringtone you’ve obtained from your PC and paste it in the newly created “ringtones” folder on the drive of your handset.

6. Eject the drive and unplug the DROID from your PC.

7. Set new new ring tone by going to Home -> Settings-> Sound & Display -> Phone Ringtone. Select the newly uploaded ringtone and… you are done!

Have you switched Gmail addresses? If for whatever reason you open or start using a different new Gmail or GoogleMail account (which anyone can now sign up for by mobile phone or online), you can transfer or move all emails from your old Gmail account to your new account, so that you can access all your old account’s emails from within your new Gmail or Google Mail account. That includes mail sent from your old account as well as all email you’ve received at your previous Gmail address. What’s more, you can fix it so that when you reply to a transferred email which someone had previously sent to your former Gmail address, their “reply” address will automatically be your new Gmail address. All this should help make the switch from your old Gmail address to your new Gmail address smoother and easier.
Here’s a tutorial “how to”, at a basic introductory level, with step by step instructions. This method will effect a “copy” rather than a “move”, strictly speaking, as the old emails should still be there in your old account; it basically automatically forwards all your email from one account to the other – but if you’re effectively switching email accounts it can make life much easier if you don’t have to login to your old account in order to read and reply to your old emails. And of course you can always delete your old email address if you really want to but remember it’s irreversible!

So. To “move” or transfer emails across between different Gmail accounts, there are two main steps:

• A. Set up the old or “source” Gmail account appropriately (enable POP forall mail), and
• B. Set up the new or “destination” Gmail account to fetch all mail from the old account, using Gmail’s useful Mail Fetch facility, which allows you tofetch mail from another Gmail account (or indeed non-Gmail POP-enabled email accounts) using POP3.

The keen eyed will have spotted that this also works to transfer your Gmail emails to a non-Gmail account or email address, e.g. to Outlook etc for backup (as long as the software can fetch mail by POP or Post Office Protocol), but obviously step B will be different in that case, and I won’t go into that any further here. Good ol’ Google have allowed POP both ways forsome time.

A. Enable POP on the old account – for ALL mail

1. Log in to your old Gmail account and enable POP (Settings, Forwarding and POP) – make sure you select “Enable POP for all mail” or “Enable POP for all mail (even mail that’s already been downloaded)” i.e. the first option in the POP section, then make sure you click Save Changes.
2. Check it to be sure – go back to Settings, Forwarding and POP, and in the POP Download section it should now read:1. Status:POP is enabled for all mail that has arrived since [this will be the date you first signed up for the old account]

   (don’t worry that nothing is selected underneath that, the main thing is to check the start date is right)

3. If it doesn’t give the right date, click against “Enable POP for all mail(even mail that’s already been downloaded)” or “Enable POP for all mail”, then click Save Changes again.
4. For the line that says “2. When messages are accessed with POP” I’d leave it at “keep Gmail/Google Mail’s copy in the Inbox” but it doesn’t hugely matter for this.
5. Logout.

B. Set up the new account to fetch all mail from the old account using Mail Fetcher

1. Sign in to your new Gmail account.
2. Set up MailFetcher to fetch email from your old account (Settings, Accounts, in the “Get email from other accounts” section click “Add another mail account”).
   
3. Enter the full email address of the old account, including the @gmail.com or @googlemail.com at the end, then click Next Step.
4. Google will fill in various bits for you including Username for the old Gmail address, POP Server and Port, and will tick “Always use a secure connection.”
5. Enter your old Google Mail account’s password in the Password box.
6. “Leave a copy of retrieved message…” – doesn’t matter whether you tick this or not.
7. “Always use a secure connection (SSL)…” – leave this ticked. DoNOT untick it or the transfer of emails may not work.
8. “Label incoming messages” – I strongly recommend that you tick this to use Gmail’s labels feature to differentiate your transferred emails from your new account’s emails, for more details see below. (The labeling feature is great – you can read more generally about using Gmail labels, Gmail labels and filters, and Gmail labels, filters and aliases.)
   • You don’t actually have to choose a New Label, you could just tick “Label incoming messages” and accept the label name they suggest by default, which will be your old email address (”oldemail@gmail.com”, yes a label name can have an @ symbol in it). As long as you know what the label name for your transferred emails is, that’s what matters.
   • Or else if you prefer you could click the dropdown box and choose New Label.
   • You’ll get a popup. If you don’t, click as necessary to allow the popup, then try New Label again, if you’re using Internet Explorer 7 or something else that blocks Javascript prompt popup windows.
   • Enter whatever name you’d like to all emails from your old account with, e.g. “Old Account Email” or “Old Emails” etc, and then OK. That way, when you view your mail in your new account, you’ll be able to distinguish easily what’s been copied fro0m your old account, and what’s been sent direct to the new account. Otherwise, they’ll all be mixed in together in your Inbox etc.
9. “Archive incoming messages (Skip the Inbox)” – it’s up to you whether you want to tick this or not. If you tick it, all Inbox email from your old account won’t be visible in your new account’s inbox, but can be found via the All Mail folder link, or located by label, or by searching.
10. Click Add Account.
11. Google will next ask you whether you want to be able to send email as whatever your old account email address is. Normally, you’ll tick No. You should only tick Yes, then Finish, if:
    • You want to be able to login to your NEW account, but also have the option of sending an email from the new account so that the From / Reply-to in your new email will appear to be from your OLD Gmail address – and when the recipient replies, their reply will also go to your OLD Gmail address initially, or
    • When you login to your NEW account, open an email that was transferred from your old account and hit Reply, you want the reply email to still appear to be from your OLD Gmail address, so that when the recipient replies again their reply will go to your OLD Gmail address initially.

If you tick Yes, you’ll have to enter a name for the old Gmail address, send a verification email to your old address, then login to the old email account to click the verification link or get the verification code from the verification email to enter it in the right box of the new account. You won’t be able to send email from your new account appearing to be from your old account until you go through the whole verification process.

12. Otherwise, tick No, then Finish. I’m assuming that if you want to copy the old account emails to the new account you’ve decided you don’t want or need to use the old account email anymore, so it’s more likely you’ll want to tick No. Then, when you login to the new account but reply to an email transferred from the old account, the From will be your new Gmail address. Which is what you’d probably prefer to happen if you’re switching everything over to your new Gmail account.

Now you’ll see that in the “Get mail from other accounts section” of your new account, it will list the email address of your old account (and any other similar accounts you want to fetch email from). Under the email address of your old account, it will say something like “Checking mail…”

Just leave it and let it do its thing. It may take a while especially if you have lots of email in the old account, even up to an hour or more.

Now if you go back and look at the Labels section in your new account’s left sidebar, you’ll see there’s a new label there in the list of labels, called “Old Account Email” or “oldgmailaddress@gmail.com” or whatever name you’ve decided to label your transferred emails with. I’ve outlined the example in red in the pic below.

Just click on the label name and you’ll see all the emails transferred over from your old Gmail account.

What’s more, if you look at your normal Inbox or Sent folder, you’ll find the emails from the old account, mixed in with the emails from your new account according to date order and thread etc in the usual way (unless of course you’d ticked the Archive incoming messages option before fetching your old account’s email). But again, because you’ve applied a label to those old emails, when you view your Inbox or Sent box etc you’ll be able to tell the old account emails apart from the new account’s emails because the subject line for the old emails will show your chosen label name in green. Again I’ve outlined the label in red below.

And don’t worry, no one else will see your labels but you, even if you forward a labelled email to someone else or reply to a labelled email they won’t see the label. Your labels are private to you and viewable only in your account. So if you want to label all emails from one person She Who Must Be Obeyed, and label emails from someone else Jerk, etc, you should be safe…

After the transfer – what can you do with the old email and old email address?

After you’ve done all that, in future:

• As mentioned, you can click on your Old Account (or whatever) label to see all your old account’s email.
• You can view your old account’s emails in the new account’s Inbox list (or Sent box etc) as they’ll be marked with your chosen label name.
• You can read a transferred email on signin to your new Gmail account, and even reply to it – and the recipient’s reply will automatically go to yournew email address (unless you chose Yes to sending email from your old email address and verified it by logging in to the old account etc, in which case their reply will go to your old email address).
• All email to your old account will be fetchable to your new account – Gmail will check your old account automatically for new emails from time to time; but if you’re impatient you can force it to check for new mail after you login to your new Gmail account (and you can even view the history of when it checked for mail from the old account from your Accounts page)
• You could if you wish alternatively set up automatic forwarding on your old account to automatically forward all email sent to your old account to your new Gmail account. This is not quite the same as POP.
• You can always tweak the fetch settings from your Accounts tab if you want to, e.g. to move future fetched emails archive, or if you want to be able to send email from your old Google Mail address after all, etc.

Troubleshooting

Done all the steps above, but still can’t see your email from your former email account in your new account after an hour or two? You could try these:

• force your new account to check for new mail from the old account, again
• try clicking the label for your old account’s emails
• go back into the old account and try “Enable POP for all mail” (even if already downloaded), as sometimes this doesn’t take the first time, make sure you Save Changes, then login to your new account, force it to check for new mail, and click your label for the old mail again.

NOTE: transferring your old emails is not the same as transferring yourcontact / address book details from the old account to new Gmail account. To do that, log in to the old Gmail account, export your Gmail contacts from the old Gmail account to a Gmail CSV file saved to your computer, then login to your new Gmail account and import that CSV file.

Note: This content was partially taken from:http://www.consumingexperience.com/2007/09/gmail-transfer-all-emails-to-new-gmail.html but I did change a couple things that did not work!

If you are windows vista user then you will be knowing thefile ownership and permissions related issues and now it is extended to windows 7 too, but Windows XP users experimenting with Windows 7 might not know about this.

Windows 7 has implemented addition security mechanism to prevent accidental or intentional file or folder modification by not allowing users other then owner of file or folder to access it. Hence incase if you need to access, modify or delete such files or folder you need to take ownership first then assign rights or permission to respective users. Here is Guide on How to take Ownership and Grant Permission in Window 7.

How to Take Ownership in Windows 7

1. Locate the file or folder on which you want to take ownership in windows explorer

2. Right click on file or folder and select “Properties” from Context Menu

3. Click on Security tab

4. Click on “Advance”

5. Now click on Owner tab in Advance Security Settings for User windows

6. Click on Edit Button and select user from given Change Owner to list if user or group is not in given list then click on other users or groups. Enter name of user/group and click ok.

8. Now select User/group and click apply and ok. (Check “Replace owner on subcontainers and objects” if you have files and folder within selected folder)

9. Click ok when Windows Security Prompt is displayed

10. Now Owner name must have changed.

11. Now click Ok to exist from Properties windows

Once you have taken the ownership of file or folder next part comes is Granting Permissions to that file/folder or object.

How to Grant Permissions in Windows 7

1. Locate the file or folder on which you want to take ownership in windows explorer

2. Right click on file or folder and select “Properties” from Context Menu

3. Click on Edit button in Properties windows Click ok to confirm UAC elevation request.

4. Select user/group from permission windows or click add to add other user or group.

5. Now under Permission section check the rights which you want to grant i.e check “Full Control” under the “Allow” column to assign full access rights control permissions to Administrators group.

6. Click Ok for changes to take effect and click ok final ok to exit from Properties window.

Now you can access files of folder in windows 7 with full permissions and take full control. Here is another simplest method to take ownership, Method to Add Take ownership Option in Right Click Menu.

But I am sure most of the users won’t be happy with manual method considering amount of time and clicks it takes to perform the task of changing ownership of files/folders or objects inwindows 7.

What if you can have Take Ownership option straight under your right click context menu ? Don’t you think it will be faster and easier to change ownership? If answer is yes then here is method to get Take Ownership option under to right click menu.

Add “Take Ownership” Option in Right Click Context Menu

1. Download TakeOwnership.zip

2. Above zip file contains two reg (registry) files InstallTakeOwnership.reg andRemoveTakeOwnership.reg.

3. Double Click on InstallTakeOwnership.reg to install Take Ownership option in context menu

Screenshot of Take Ownership Option in Right Click Context Menu

In order to remove Take Ownership option double click on RemoveTakeOwnership.reg.

You’ve heard you need a firewall to keep your computer’s identity “stealth” (hidden) while online so you can keep intruders and undesirable programs blocked out. But there are so many options. Not simply between software products, but hardware choices as well. How do you know which is right for you? Let’s look at the differences.

First of all, hardware is something you can see, like the monitor you are looking at to read this text right now. Typically hardware refers to the hard physical elements—the computer, the keyboard, the circuitry inside your computer—anything you can see and touch. (Hardware always includes some form of software, but you don’t see this. For example, your computer keyboard has a software program written into the circuitry that allows what you type to appear on the screen. But you don’t have to purchase this software for your keyboard. It’s already there.)

Software, on the other hand, is a computer program that tells the hardware exactly what to do. This webpage, for example, was written in a computer language called HTML. This HTML program tells your monitor how to display the text you are reading now. Software is the name for the instructions that tell the computer what to do. All software requires hardware to run.

A hardware firewall is a small metal box filled with plug openings, or ports. You hook your computer network into the box then set it up on your computer, just as you would a new printer or other peripheral.

Because it’s not physically on your machine, a hardware firewall is somewhat less vulnerable than a software firewall. You could look at a hardware firewall as a mini computer, and the price of hardware firewalls reflect this difference. Hardware firewalls are typically owned by larger businesses.

Software firewalls give you the level of protection you need to keep safe from hackers and other unwanted intrusions because software is far easier for computer novices to customize. The features are suited to smaller home networks.

Some top software firewall packages also include anti-spam, anti-virus, even anti-popup ad software. Some software firewalls are flexible enough to incorporate your existing anti-software into its firewall program. Some software firewalls also include parental controls to manage what kinds of websites your children visit. Some packages will also allow you to block photos and specific text content that you do not want your children to view.

Hardware firewalls are best suited to businesses and large networks; software firewalls are best suited for the home user who wants easy customization

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—> I hope you have enjoyed the posts that we continue to provide here at Solutions For Life. Our goal is to continually educate our users on the technology around us. We don’t write simply for our entertainment. Nope, our goal is to educate us all how to connect to the world around you…

Sincerely,

Ben Adams

SENIOR IT CONSULTANT

I have tried the AVG free anti-virus to protect my computer off-and-on for several years and on various operating systems that I have had at home. During this time, it used its own auto update every day to check for updates and download them so it should be fully updated at all times.

Throughout the time, I have continually been disappointed with the results. A great example occurred last week while working with a company that I will leave unnamed.  Several of the computers were running slowly, so I ran a scan with the McAfee Stinger which can be downloaded here as well as the Trend Micro Housecall.  BOTH came up with tons of viruses ranging from Trojans to worms.  I also saw several occasions where AVG would find a virus but then have no fix.

I then discovered a huge gaping hole in AVG Free. AVG free runs regular complete scans via its own scheduler, if you do not have automatically heal infected files checked in the settings, AVG will not only leave the malicious files it detects alone. IT WILL NOT WARN YOU OR ALERT YOU IN ANY WAY THAT IT HAS DETECTED VIRUS ACTIVITY.  The scan will run until complete then close.

That is simply unacceptable!!  Obviously AVG Free was not detecting the main down-loader Trojan or going any way to stop its activity.  Did I mention we were PAYING for AVG?  What would we have gotten if we used the free version?  Obviously, we are now paying for Trend Micro.

I could spend a whole post complaining about AVG and some of the other free solutions out there, but instead, let me explain a couple of helpful tips.

One way that companies keep anti-virus and firewalls free is by depending on reports from customers and other IT Admins concerning security risk.  Although this is a great system, this reactive rather than proactive.  Many IT Professionals also choose “NO” when asked whether they want to participate in the feedback program, because they do not want an extra task.  You are also depending on people to give you a solution from their own free-will.  Some companies have a paid version for customers, and the free version is funded from the left-over R&D of the paid subscribers.  They obviously reach the least support.

When you pay for Anti-virus and go with a common name, you receive the millions of dollars that go in to proactive R&D.  You receive industry-standard support that is often based in your language.  Again, you get what you pay for.  Who do I use for Anti-Virus?  I personally use McAfee, and I recommend Trend-Micro.  Both are fairly priced, and do not leave a huge foot-print like F-Secure and Norton.  However, you can make your own decision.

When making a decision concerning open source or paid anti-virus, consider this: Do you really want to scrimp on security? Do you really want to put yourself at risk when it comes to your computer’s sensitive information?  That is all the motivation I need!!

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—> I hope you have enjoyed the posts that we continue to provide here at Solutions For Life. Our goal is to continually educate our users on the technology around us. We don’t write simply for our entertainment. Nope, our goal is to educate us all how to connect to the world around you…

Sincerely,

Ben Adams

SENIOR IT CONSULTANT

For those who have always imputed Windows Vista for its anomalies, may also denounce it’s security features. Well, it must have occurred to you that when you are trying to move or delete some files, Windows clogs you with an error. Either it gives an error message or prompts that the file is in use. Not only in Vista this even occurs with Windows XP. In order to tweak Vista’s system you have to modify some system files. Vista has these system files locked and you can’t access them. For this you require ownership of the file. You need to take ownership of the files and grant a username full control of the file. I’ll let you know how to take ownership of Vista system files.

In order to take ownership of Vista system files take the steps below

Step 1: First access the command prompt

Click the on the start button>All Programs>Accessories

Step 2: Right Click on the command prompt

Step 3: Select Run as administrator.

Step 4: When the UAC Prompt appears, click Continue.

Once you have your elevated command prompt, follow these steps:

For our example, we are going to use the Bubbles screensaver file (Bubbles.scr)

At the command prompt, input takeown /f filepath (takeown /f c:\windows\system32\Bubbles.scr).

Now, press Enter on the keyboard.

You will get a message displaying that this completed successfully.

Step 4: Now input icacls filepath /grant yourusername:f (icacls c:\windows\system32\Bubbles.scr /grant shamanstears:f).

Step 5: A message will be displayed that this completed successfully.

You are done, now you can modify or replace the file. When you are done, simply remove the permissions to keep the file secure.

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—> I hope you have enjoyed the posts that we continue to provide here at Solutions For Life. Our goal is to continually educate our users on the technology around us. We don’t write simply for our entertainment. Nope, our goal is to educate us all how to connect to the world around you…

Sincerely,

Ben Adams

SENIOR IT CONSULTANT

—> A prospective deal between Google and Twitter that would see posts from the social networking giant published in a search results feed would change the way SMEs approach search engine optimisation and marketing, an industry expert says.

According to a report posted on All Things Digital, the tech-industry focused blog of the Wall Street Journal, the two companies are in talks to create a feed that would show posts from the social networking giant.

Software giant Microsoft is also reportedly involved in discussions about a deal, “in which the companies would license a full feed from the micro-blogging service that could then be integrated into the results of their competing search engines”.

SEO expert Chris Thomas says a deal would change the way SMEs approach search engine optimisation, as Google would then have access to a huge number of new pages that would be used for search results.

Thomas says any deal between the two companies would make sense, as Google has been responding to Twitter’s popular “real-time” search capabilities by updating its search filters to be faster and more relevant.

“Google has responded to the real-time search thing by speeding up its indexing capabilities, but it’s just not quick enough to keep up with the likes of Twitter which has millions of tweets. Google robots can’t index everything and they need something like this to help.”

“My gut feeling is that to have this sort of deal there would need to be some sort of staticness or relevance to the tweet feed, because otherwise you’d just be getting spammed by millions of random tweets. If you were doing some sort of SEO strategy you’d need a tweet to your site if someone searched for you, that sort of thing.”

The prospective deal, which could include a payment of several million dollars to Twitter and a revenue deal, would be non-exclusive and would see Twitter maintain its independence.

Any contract would come at a time when Twitter is seeking to raise revenue by charging corporate clients for specific services. A Twitter feed with Google could be an avenue for those corporate products to be introduced, as well as the “premium services” chief executive Biz Stone has spoken about this year.

Executives at Twitter, Microsoft and Google have so far made no comment about the reports.

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—> I hope you have enjoyed the posts that we continue to provide here at Solutions For Life. Our goal is to continually educate our users on the technology around us. We don’t write simply for our entertainment. Nope, our goal is to educate us all how to connect to the world around you…

Sincerely,

Ben Adams

SENIOR IT CONSULTANT

Google delivered its refined search options box to new mobile platform Android today, which should help search engine optimization (SEO) professionals raise website profiles.

The new options give Google users the option to filter their search results in unconventional ways. Searchers can exclude internet shopping sites, find websites that they have already visited, and limit their results to a specific type of website, such as forums. Experts say that the refinements were introduced as a response to the slight gains posted by rival search engine Bing.

With the addition of these options to Android, Google’s new mobile phone operating system, the company has greatly expanded the pool of searches that search engine optimization (SEO) techniques can influence. The search option features will also function on smartphones running iPhone OS and PalmWebOS, which will additionally heighten their impact and market penetration.

Android is expected to quickly snatch a significant share of the smartphone OS market, with multiple handset manufacturers lined up to produce Android phones. Refined mobile search coupled with Google’s dominant position atop the search engine market could prove a potent combination.