Newmind Internships

Gumption. Chutzpah. Call it what you will, but you know that spirit of confidence and adventure? That stuff inside a person that made pioneers move West or caused a man to move out to the woods to live deliberately (that’s not too grandiose, right?). That ingredient in a person that allows them to step outside the confines of the “norm” and purposefully move forward. Yes, THAT. That is the stuff Newmind interns are made of.

Password Security and Protecting Yourself Online

There is a 14 year old right now in their parents' basement on a computer. They don’t know your password, but with a little time and ingenuity they could get into your email account. Once they’re in your email account, it’s just a matter of time before they’re in your Amazon, Netflix, bank, and even Paypal. Heck, even public figures have learned the hard way that password reminder tools can hurt just as much as they can help.

That password that stands between you and chaos, can be a string of six alphanumerics or if you’re a real overachiever it might be 16 characters and substitute a $ for an S. Ohhhh, tricky.

The thing is, that pa5$w0rd helps spread a false perception that your online data is secure. These days, accounts are daisy chained together for your convenience, but it’s pretty convenient for a hacker too. How many sites are setup with your email address as your username? How many other sites are setup to login with your Facebook or Twitter account? Get one and you’ve got them all, and that’s not hard to do with some of your personal information that’s publicly available and easily found online.

You talked. We listened.

Teachers Have Great Ideas!

We love hearing from our customers, and we use your suggestions whenever we can to improve our services. A suggestion came up recently that has made us look at our Chromebooks packages and decide to make some changes.

The story goes like this. The purchasing agent for a school district in Texas placed an order for several of the original Samsung Series-5 Chromebooks back in April 2012. During implementation, the technology instructors found them to be great devices for their students and in September, 2012 the purchasing agent called Newmind up again to order a bunch more Chromebooks as well as some charging carts.

Halloween is for ChromeBOOks

From the scary fast startup times to an undead battery, remember the the Chromebook for everyone this Halloween. 

Contact us to chat about the Chromebooks and how they're different from any other device out there.

Tech Tip: Most Often Missed Gmail Labs

By Steve Chang, Google Apps Certified Deployment Engineer




Customization has always been in my blood from cars, sportbikes, and even PCs. It is a way to personalize something that you own to something that you enjoy. Sometimes when you are given something that is a very useful system like Google Apps for Business, you just want to personalize and squeeze out more performance. That is where you find Google Labs.

Greenleaf Hospitality Group chooses Google Apps

Greenleaf Hospitality Group, recently named among the 50 Most Engaged Workplaces in the U.S., is a hospitality management company that oversees two hotels, five ice arenas, seven restaurants, two retail shops, a spa, and is currently 800+ employees strong. Their locations and employees are spread out across an entire state, and employees can often be found on the road between locations. Getting them data when they need it is crucial to operations. Recently, Greenleaf was looking at opportunities that would allow them to move away from their aging and undersized IT system, including Exchange.

Michael Cross
Dir. of Technology Services

“We were looking at changing our entire infrastructure, and email was at the top of the list,” explains Michael Cross, Director of Technology Services. “We had explored staying with Exchange, as well as moving to a cloud solution like Office365 or Google Apps.”

Newmind Hosts IT Innovation Happy Hour

Newmind Group, a local IT services provider who serves over 800 clients across the US, is hosting a complimentary IT Innovation Happy Hour on October 9 at Webster’s Prime Steakhouse in Downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan. 

Newmind has been assisting IT and business leaders across the country with innovative IT solutions that provide dramatic savings and productivity improvements.  Until now, besides a handful of local clients Newmind has remained fairly unknown in the local community here in West Michigan.  Newmind is hosting this Happy Hour to introduce our innovative solutions to area business and IT leaders in a casual atmosphere. 

“We love our local community here in Kalamazoo” said Daniel Jefferies Newmind Group’s founder. “Until now we haven’t been very good neighbors as far as bringing our innovative and cost saving approaches to local organizations.  This Happy Hour event is our way of inviting people out to meet us and see what we are about.”

The event is free, but seating is limited. Tickets can be reserved at: http://goo.gl/D4SsP or by calling Newmind at 269.492.0469

Tech Tip: Inbox Zero

By Heath Miller, Google Apps Certified Sales & Deployment Specialist

Communication has always been important in both our personal and professional lives. This is because communication is not just about sending and receiving messages: communication is about building and maintaining relationships.

Many years ago, the cornerstones of communication in the business world was mail and memos. In fact, whole departments were devoted to ensure proper flow and delivery of these messages. Recipients had to have a method of filing for record keeping and of course respond to those messages.
As time has gone on, email has taken over as the primary communication method between co-workers, vendors, and clients, but we haven’t changed our method of managing those communications.

Newmind vs. Google: Where should I purchase my Apps?

What's the Difference?

Clients sometimes ask us why they should buy or renew their licenses with Newmind instead of directly from Google? This table below illustrates the advantages of a relationship with Newmind as your Google Partner. You can think of Newmind as that layer of Customer Service for your Google Apps, so it’s kind of like getting two great companies for the price of one.

Office365: Baby I'm Leaving You

Consider what would happen to your business if your ability to email disappeared for a month.

One company who contacted Newmind recently was faced with that exact scenario. Their email was inoperable for an entire month, decimating their main means of communication with their clients and potential clients. We’ve seen companies come to us for different reasons, from a lot of different solutions, but this one really stood out. That solution? Office365.

Stern Estate isn’t a company that exists on computers, it exists in one-on-one relationships with the people they are helping, and their email system is simply a necessary tool they use to get the job done. 

Smooth Operator

When you’re in the business of helping people, which we are, customer feedback is everything. Sometimes it’s word of mouth, sometimes it’s online reviews, and sometimes, more rarely, it’s directly into our inbox.

This email was received regarding our newest addition to the team, Nicolas. Nick has impressed us since he started here, but it is great to know that he’s impressing the experts as well:

Chromebooks :: Gen 2 is Here

Like a little brother taking his driver’s exam, Chromebooks are coming of age. When they made their debut last year, there were some naysayers who questioned the usability of a device that merged the OS and thebrowser, but as more and more people have moved their lives to the cloud, the viability of the Chromebook seemed more inevitable.

Schools in particular have been enamored with the ease of fleet management, quick start up, and long battery life of the Chromebook. Corporations have taken notice too of how Chromebooks can be a remedy for a lot of what ails them and cure some of their hardware headaches.

Early adoption can be hard when the innovation is untested in the real world. If you were waiting for some of the Chromebooks kinks to get worked out before you jumped in, mark... set... go...

Maybe I Drive, Maybe You Walk

I admit since Google announced the Drive I haven’t been able get R.E.M.'s Drive out of my head, but I don’t mind too much because it’s a great song and I haven’t listened to it in far too long.  Feel free to hum as you read on.

Remember diskettes?

They were coaster sized and coaster shaped, and you likely had a special container to hold all of these plastic and metal nuggets of data storage.

They were standard features in office landscapes until they gave way to the Flash Drive. Now there was a slick method of moving your info from point A to point B. If you lost the little guy though, you could always go back to the tried and true method of emailing yourself a file. Oh wait. You still email yourself files?

Enter Google Drive

If you’ve used Google Docs before you’re already halfway there. Essentially, Google Drive is what Google Docs was, but now you can put anything in there. Word documents, pdf, jpg, eps, wav, psd, indd, ttf, csv, you get the idea. You can put anything you want to in your Drive then have it with you wherever you log in to your Gmail account whether you’re at home, the office, the park, or the grocery store. 

Newmind Named Among Top 100 Cloud Service Providers

Newmind Group now ranks among the world’s top 100 cloud service providers (CSPs), according to Nine Lives Media’s second-annual Talkin’ Cloud 100 report. The companies featured in the top 100 CSPs generated more than $2.3 billion in combined cloud services revenues in 2011. This number is up nearly 46 percent from 2010 according to the Talkin’ Cloud report.

The Talkin’ Cloud 100 report recognizes top cloud service providers based on such metrics as annual cloud services revenue growth (both in actual dollars and in percentage growth rates).

Companies reflected in the Talkin’ Cloud 100 report include:

• Cloud service providers -- companies that offer IaaS, PaaS and/or SaaS
• Cloud aggregators -- companies that offer online marketplaces for sourcing cloud applications, platforms and/or infrastructure
• Cloud brokers -- companies that recommend a range of cloud applications for customers
• Cloud integrators -- companies that link multiple cloud services into a customer solution
• VARs (value-added resellers) with cloud services expertise
• MSPs (managed service providers) with cloud services expertise

“Newmind Group is passionate about cloud computing, and using cloud services to make life easier for our customers,” said Sara Brylowski, Marketing Manager for Newmind Group. “What really gets us going is looking at all of the great successes our customers have had with Google Apps and seeing how the tools that we’ve been able help them find and use have improved their businesses. To get recognized for doing this by Talkin’ Cloud is icing on the cake.”

The Talkin’ Cloud 100 report is based on data from Talkin’ Cloud’s online survey, conducted January through April 2012.

The Power of Collaboration

For better or worse, you likely can't count all of the times in an average work day that you collaborate with your coworkers.

If you work in an open office setting you are unwittingly in cahoots on everything from work tasks to what music to listen to, and the longer the distance between you and your coworkers the more essential it is to find tools that make the collaboration painless.

A good day to be a Newminder

New Report Lists Newmind Group among North America’s Top 200 Managed Service Providers (MSPs)

Kalamazoo, MI --  Newmind Group, Inc. has landed on Nine Lives Media’s MSPmentor 200 North America Edition, a first-ever list identifying North America’s top 200 managed service providers (MSPs).

The MSPmentor 200 North America Edition is determined by the organization’s global online survey, conducted October-December 2011. The MSPmentor 200 North America Edition recognizes top managed service providers based on a range of metrics, including annual managed services revenue growth, revenue per employee, managed services offered and customer devices managed.

Newmind Group, Inc. Becomes A Google Apps Premier SMB Reseller

Kalamazoo, MI -- Newmind Group, Inc., based in Kalamazoo, MI announced today that it has become a Premier SMB Reseller of the Google Apps™ suite of communication and collaboration tools.  This new designation from Google enables customers to more easily assess a reseller’s expertise advising on and deploying Google products.  Newmind Group has moved from an Authorized to a Premier Reseller based on their expertise and success in helping customers deploy and use Google Apps.  Newmind provides planning, assessment, technical expertise, training, and customization services to Google Apps administrators and users from coast to coast.  From mid-sized businesses and local governments to global corporations, over 700 organizations have been supported by Newmind Group in their transition to Google Apps.

“For the last four years Newmind has had the privilege of working at the leading edge of cloud computing,” said Daniel Jefferies, Newmind’s founder. “Becoming a Premier SMB Reseller reminds us both of the exciting projects that our clients have had the vision to undertake, and also of the great deal of hard work on the part of Newminders and our friends at Google alike.”

Google Apps brings simple, powerful communication and collaboration tools to organizations of any size – all hosted by Google to streamline setup, minimize maintenance, and reduce IT costs.  With Gmail (including Google email security, powered by Postini), Google Calendar, and integrated IM, users can stay connected and work together with ease. And, using Google Docs and Google Sites, which include word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and website creation tools, they can share files and collaborate in real-time, keeping versions organized and available wherever and whenever users work.

The Google Apps Reseller program includes companies globally that sell, service and customize Google Apps for Business for their customers. As a part of the Apps Reseller program, Newmind Group, Inc. receives training, support and deployment tools from Google, as well as access to APIs for integrating Google Apps into their customers' business operations.  To learn more about becoming a Premier Reseller, including eligibility criteria and benefits, please visit the Google Reseller Program website:http://www.google.com/enterprise/resellers.

For more information on Newmind Group, Inc. program please visit http://www.newmindgroup.com.  

Newmind Group is an IT managed service provider specializing in cloud computing solutions.  Based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Newmind Group has helped over 700 organizations across all 50 states move to cloud computing and software-as-a-service solutions.  Newmind’s mission to help clients use technology to make work more profitable, productive, and enjoyable.