Is your company’s website mobile-friendly? Do you know? If your website looks the same on a smartphone as it does on a computer screen—except smaller—then your site is not optimized for mobile. Anyone who wants to access your site on a smartphone will have a hard time navigating it.

But that’s not the half of it. Search engines like Google and Bing rank mobile-friendly sites higher on mobile search. So that means when someone is searching on a smartphone for the product or service your company offers, the search engine is going to put mobile-friendly sites at the top of the results. And more and more people search primarily on mobile.

That means that getting your site optimized for mobile is absolutely critical if you don’t want to lose business to your competitors.

Mobile-Friendly: Two Ways to Get There

To gain an edge in mobile search, you can take one of two approaches: responsive design for your existing site or building a separate mobile site.

• Responsive design – Responsive design means making changes to your existing site so that it looks good on mobile and desktop. A web designer can do this for you. And with responsive design, any changes you make to your website will also appear on the mobile site with no extra steps. Another advantage of responsive design is better search engine optimization (SEO). Google claims that having a single site results in better performance than two sites that may split traffic.
• Separate mobile site – A separate, mobile version of your original site with just the most necessary information on it that makes it easy for users to find your services, location, and contact info. Because mobile sites have less content, users who want more details will likely switch to your desktop site—or go to a competitor’s site. But for companies with a lot of products or services to offer, a separate mobile site is best because it streamlines the mobile experience.

Mobile Web Design from a Company You Trust

Did you know that Solvere One provides web design services? To learn more, contact us online or call (202) 905-2722.

Smartphone Security Risks

Smartphones, with all their convenience and utility, are at high risk for data breach. Common risks include:

• Physical theft – Even Apple employees leave their phones—even prototype iPhones!—unattended long enough to get stolen. When a phone’s data isn’t properly encrypted, a thief, no matter how tech-savvy, can access not only the phone owner’s personal information, but company data including emails, documents, and more.
• Data theft from discarded phones – When someone gets a new phone, it’s typically easy to transfer data from their old phone to the new model. But it’s not as simple to completely erase, or wipe, data from the old phone. When data isn’t properly removed and destroyed, it is up for grabs to anyone who gets access to the device.
• Unintentional or unknowing disclosure – Smartphone apps and location services can gain access to a lot of a phone or phone user’s information. Your employee may not realize how much access they are allowing when they download an app or upload a photo while using location services.
• Phishing – It happens on desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones—phishing. If an employee isn’t knowledgeable about phishing scams, an attacker can access and collect a great deal of data.

How to Keep Employee Smartphones Safe

• Require employees to use a password, PIN, or other means to control access to their phones. Encourage them to change the password often and keep it secret.
• Consider requiring employees to install anti-malware and anti-virus on their phones.
• Have your IT support set up SSL VPN access to company systems. When you establish a Secure Socket Layer virtual private network (SSL VPN), it will encrypt smartphone traffic while in transit between the device and the company network.
• Ask your IT support team what the best wireless security measures are and have those measures in place.
• If you issue company smartphones to employees, consider using device identification technology, which assigns a unique number to each phone and allows your IT support team to remotely disable the device if necessary.
• Encourage your employees to only download applications from trusted sources, such as their phone service providers’ app stores.

Your IT Support Can Help Protect Smartphone Data

Stay productive and secure with wireless security from your trusted IT support team. To learn more about employee smartphone security and best practices for your business, call Solvere One at (202) 905-2722.

When opening BBM for the first time, you will be prompted to set up your profile. Your Display Name will be how you show up to other people, so be sure to make it something identifiable. You can also choose a picture to represent yourself. If you click on the picture icon, you will be given the choice of pictures on your Blackberry or to take a new one. You can change this information at any time by clicking on your own name at the top of the BBM screen.

The main screen shows all your contacts, any groups you may have set up, and any pending invitations.

For each person you want to communicate with, you will need to add them as a contact. Hit the menu button on the Blackberry and choose Invite Contact, then choose to invite by PIN, type in the or the name of someone in your contacts who has a PIN listed, and send the invite.

Each person you invite will then need to accept your initiation. When someone else invites you, you will see a notification icon that looks like the icon you get when someone sends you a message. When you go to BBM, you will see a new request. Clicking on the name will allow you to Accept or Decline the invitation and assign it to a category, if you have them.

Once you have collected a few contacts, you may want to organize them into groups. The menu allows you to create and rename categories and move contacts into them multiperson chats.

You can also start multiperson chats through this menu. Now that you are set up and have some contacts, start sending some messages and you will quickly learn how to use Blackberry Messenger for confidential, dependable communication. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask your Systems Administrators.

Organizing your Message Folder

The first step to setting up your Blackberry is organizing your email message folder. One of the best ways to do this is to limit your message folder to only incoming messages.  By default, the Blackberry message folder includes both incoming and sent messages. While this helps you remember quickly whether or not you replied to a certain message, it also adds clutter to your message folder and can easily be accomplished by other means.

To limit your message folder to only incoming mail do the following: while in the message folder press the Blackberry menu key (the button immediately to the left of the trackpad), go down to “Options,” and then choose “Message Display and Actions.” From here, just scroll down and check “Hide Sent Messages”

To see messages that you’ve sent so that you can confirm if you replied to an email simply press the “Alt” button and then the “O” button (for “Outgoing”). This will list all of your sent emails. To go back to your inbox simply press the back/escape button (directly to the right of the trackpad).

Searching your Messages

It often becomes necessary to search through your messages. While the Blackberry search functionality isn’t up to par with Outlook, it is still very useful for finding recent messages. The main limitation of the Blackberry message search is that you’re limited to a certain number of days in the past, usually 30, which is not encountered when using Outlook.

To search both incoming and outgoing emails, simply press the menu key and choose “Search.” From there you can search by subject, recipient, or sender. If you need to use the more advanced options in your search, press the menu key, scroll to “Search By,” and choose “Advanced.” The Advanced search allows you search by both name and subject at the same time; choose which folders to search; choose whether to search sent messages, received messages, or both; and it allows you to specify the type of message you’re looking for (i.e., a flagged message).

Flagging your Messages

A functionality that I find handy is the ability to flag messages. It works in the same way as flagging a message in Outlook and the flag status will automatically synchronize with Outlook so that messages flagged on your Blackberry will be flagged in Outlook. While you can press the menu key and choose “Flag for Followup,” the keyboard shortcut is a lot quicker. To flag a message, simply press the “W” key. To then mark a flagged message as complete press the “W” key again. If you end up accidentally flagging a message, you can clear the flag by pressing the menu key and choosing “Clear Flag.”

While the ability to flag messages combined with the automatic synchronization with Outlook would be great by itself, you can also easily view all of your flagged messages on your Blackberry using a keyboard shortcut. To view your flagged messages, press the “Alt” key and then the “F” key (for “Flagged”). This will bring up all of your flagged messages, both pending and complete.

Using the Blackberry Memopad

Another useful tool is the Blackberry Memopad. The title of this app is pretty self explanatory; the Memopad allows you to write down important notes and reminders. What makes this a great app is that it automatically syncs with Outlook Notes giving you an easy way to always have your notes with you. Regardless of whether you make the notes in Outlook or on the Blackberry, they will appear on both.

Using Keyboard Shortcuts

* These are not typos, these shortcuts were not mapped correctly in the new Blackberry operating systems. Older Blackberries have the correct mapping where N skips to the next day and P goes back to the previous day.

For those of us who use our BlackBerries (BB) day in and day out quickly typing, sending messages, and navigating on the BlackBerry has become easy.  We thought we would pass some of our top BB shortcuts on to you.

Keyboard Shortcuts in Messages

C – compose new message
U – takes you to the next unread message
T – takes you to the top of the list
B – takes you to the bottom of the list
F – forward
R – reply to message
L – reply to all
P – takes you to previous day
N – takes you to next day
S – search
V – view saved messages
Space – takes you down one page

Address Book Lookups:

Your BB is connected to an LDAP server so you can do lookups in the Global Address List.  That means if you need someone’s information and they have a House.gov account you may be able to find their info using your BB even if you haven’t created a personal contact for them.

When sending a new message simply type in the person’s name (usually LastName, FirstName works best) and select “lookup” (it will be highlighted below where you are typing).  It may take the BB a few seconds to find them so be patient.  If it doesn’t find them try typing their name a different way.

When looking for a person’s general contact info go to the Address Book application and start typing their name. Once you have entered it select “*No Address*” and your BB will perform a Global Adress List lookup.  The BB will take a few seconds to do the search and then display a list of results.  Once you have found the person you can add them to your address book by selecting them, pressing the applications button (the button to the left of the scroll ball), and choosing “add.”  Even if you are not sure how to spell their name make a guess – you can even leave out part of the name (EX. Tim Seym will find Tim Seymour) and it will still give you a list of possible people.  You could even search just by last name or just by first name – its almost like using a phone book!

Typing Shortcuts

To make a selection hold the Shift Key (Caps) and scroll with the ball.  That will make a selection. You can then copy, cut, or paste into that region depending.

Double click space key – puts in a period
Hold down a letter key – makes a capital letter

Remember, the typing shortcuts work everywhere on the BB, so use them!