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.


Any internship is about experience, and a Newmind internship is no different. With Newmind though, that experience comes with seeing how a successful team operates, working with today’s technology, and cultivating a talent that our interns know they have but aren’t sure how to use. All of these are invaluable to someone starting out or changing paths. The one common thread with some of the past Newmind interns is that the time that they’ve spent in their internship helped them find themselves and their path into the future.

Nicolas Yarosz
Certified Google Apps Trainer
Certified Google Apps Sales Specialist

“[Applying] for the job was a bit of an adventure,” Nicolas, a past Sales intern says. “I knew starting out would be a challenge, but that it would be satisfying because it would be an accelerated learning experience and a safe place to take risks. It was an opportunity to work with a company that would provide me a lot of room to grow, and grow quickly. It was worth the investment of my time.”

What is it about Newmind that makes an internship worthwhile? Apart from getting their hands dirty with technology, the culture is what past interns harken back to. “Each person [in the organization] has a lot of influence, and the group is really a family. The fact that I can make a difference for so many people is rewarding. In so many jobs you don’t see the fruits of your actions and this is really exciting. A collaborative environment, honest communication, honest feedback, honest exchange, the freedom to be myself and for my personality to shine. I don’t need to conform to the man, man,” Logan, a Newmind Tech Intern, laughs. “Newmind trusts their employees. I’m personally responsible for my own space and my own work. I feel like I have ownership of my own position, and having so much personal responsibility can be much harder than just being trained to be a yes man.”

Logan Jensen
Certified Google Apps Trainer

“The culture encourages me to let my personality shine," Nicolas continues. "I’m not thinking in the back of my mind that I’m not saying the right thing in the right way. That makes customers more comfortable because they know they’re talking to a real human being. I’m cared about by my owner and my co-workers. A lot is expected of you, but it’s not a corporate thing, it’s a cultural thing.”

Like a lot of industry internships, the Newmind internships are unpaid for a time. “We begin with a list of clear goals for each intern,” says Daniel Jefferies, founder of Newmind. “As soon as the goals are met, normally within the first 1 to 2 months of part time work, interns start earning a modest hourly wage. Some interns become full time members of the team after their internship is complete”

Our interns agree that what they get out of the experience is worth it. “It wasn’t too exciting to not be paid,” Nicolas says. “It was tough, but it was worth the sacrifice. Interning with Newmind Group provided me with the skills and experience that will always make me a more valuable employee. They have made me valuable to Newmind as well, and prepared me for a real life job. This job forced me to learn how to prioritize and organize well, and that is invaluable in many other areas of my life. What I learned at Newmind as an intern has not only affected my job here, but also how successful I can be in life.”

Newmind is currently accepting applications for internships.
Visit http://www.newmindgroup.com/site/jobs/  for more information.

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.


Hackers compromise data every day, and it doesn’t always make the headlines. For every incident of Anonymous taking down the banks and government agencies in Israel that makes national news, there are countless others that don’t. Hospitals, schools, insurance agencies, NASA. If they can get in there, your little email account is no sweat.

The move to the cloud has been a slow one, so it’s no wonder that we’ve been lulled into complacency.  In the early days of the internet, the “cloud” was barely a vapor, so your passwords could reasonably serve their purpose as their were few avenues of mayhem that a hackers could follow.

Now though, your photos, documents, money, communications... they’re all in the cloud. They’re safe from physical destruction there. A fire, flood, or hurricane can’t compromise them, but as these online accounts have blossomed, online providers have acquiesced to the user desire for convenience and have created a system riddled with vulnerability. We’ve been told that our savior here is the password, but the notion of a “strong” password is a lollypop we’re given to cover up the bitter taste of inherent weaknesses in the system.

Passwords can be guessed, stolen, cracked, lifted, and reset. Yes, people still choose terrible passwords. Yes, people recycle usernames and passwords from site to site. Yes, criminals can be tricky and make you think you’re doing one thing when you’re really doing another. And yes, the bad guys can take much more nefarious levels of tricking you. Then end result is the same though.

So what can you do? I mean, this is all pretty bleak! Short of installing a usb retina scanner or moving to the hills and going off the grid, what are your options?

There are actions you can take. There are actions you should take. And now.

1. Two factor verification. 
Some sites use multiple factors to authenticate the user at login. These can be knowledge factors (something you know like a password or PIN), inherence factors (something you are like a biometric of some sort), and possession factors (something you have like a mobile device or IT card). 

If you’re using Google Apps, you can enable 2-step verification for your domain to add that extra layer of security. Once it’s been enabled for your domain, the user selects the method for receiving their verification code on their mobile device: text message, phone call, via the Authenticator app on smartphones. 

After the initial setup, at the next login the user will enter their username and password as usual, then on a second page they will be prompted to enter their verification code from their phone. 

This two factor authentication is just the start for the Google, who is looking into other methods of verification and is vigilant at watching the patterns of your account and letting you know if anything odd happens. 

What happens if a device is lost or stolen? Google Apps supports Mobile Device Management tools, and Android devices that are registered in the Account Admin Panel can be remotely wiped if they might be compromised. 

2. Lie to your security questions.
Trick ‘em. What city were you born in? Where did you honeymoon? What is your mother’s maiden name? The Sea of Tranquility, Xanadu, and Mad Max. If it’s something I can look up on your Facebook page, it’s not something that should be guarding you online. Make up answers and stop being so predictable. 

3. Create a new email account. 
Make a whole new email account that isn’t tied to your name, and use it only for your password resets. If you use a password manager like LastPass, tie that to this new email account as well. The key is to NOT have all of your eggs in one basket, and to stop daisy chaining everything together. 

4. Have some password savvy. 
Substituting numbers for letter is sooooo 2010.  Most hacking tools have these built into their tools now, so stop it. But don’t use dictionary words either, unless you’re using a string of them. Simplicity, length, and variance are all factors to consider when you’re choosing passwords. 

5. Erase the loose ends.
Head over to spokeo.com and search for yourself.
Freaked out yet? It’s easy to hop on sites like Spokeo, Pipl, or Whitepages and find out the basics to start an attack, but it’s also simple to preemptively go on those sites and have your listing removed. Do it. 

We didn’t want to bring you a bunch of doom and gloom to darken your day, but being on the cloud in this day and age means being vigilant in keeping your data as safe as you can. Luckily, if you’re using Google Apps, there are some extra measures you can easily take that will make you that much safer online.

Security training. Auditing. Two factor authorization. It can all be a little overwhelming. If you have any questions about online security tools, or how to incorporate them into your business, contact Newmind today. As always, we’re here to help.

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.

The catch? During the lapse between these two orders, Google had announced the much faster and sleeker Samsung 550 Chromebook, and it was these that the purchasing agent requested for the second order. What the purchasing agent didn’t know was that the tech instructors in the school district were consistently using the VGA dongles, included with every Samsung Series-5 Chromebook, to connect to powerpoint machines, etc., which Samsung had decided to not include with the new Samsung 550 Chromebook.

So, when the second order of Chromebooks arrived in early October, Vicki, the head of technology instructors for the district, called us up wondering where her dongles were. I explained that Samsung had discovered that most Chromebooks users had found them to be of little value so they were not being added to the 550 Chromebooks.

Needless to say Vicki was bummed by the news. We talked about it for a while and she completely agreed that having a VGA dongle for every Chromebook wasn’t really that useful and understood their decision. She did have an idea for us though.

Vicki’s suggestion? For every charging cart we sell, include one VGA dongle so that each “mobile Chromebooks lab” has a way for teachers to connect to their power point machines. This way, no matter if purchasing agents, teachers, principals, or others are the ones actually placing the orders, the folks in the classroom who end up using the Chromebooks will have the tools they need to be successful.

All of us on the Chromebooks team here at Newmind talked about Vicki’s idea. We all love it and have decided to implement it. In those larger organizations that have different people making the purchases than who end up using the devices, we want to be that stop-gap to make sure that the end-users have what they need to be successful.

A big thank you goes out to Vicki in Texas for helping us identify this way for us to better help our customers. For all you other Newmind clients out there, we’d love to hear what you think are good ideas to make us better at meeting your technology needs, so don’t hold back.

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.



As you may know, Google engineers are encouraged to take 20 percent of their time to work on something company-related that interests them personally and that they are passionate about. Although Google Labs has stopped producing new products, many are still available for your Google Mail enjoyment. Here are my top 3 picks of Google Mail Labs currently available to customize your Google Mail accounts, so here we go.

#3: Canned Responses
Within communication in any industry, there has always been a time where you typed the same email over and over again making both the process and the material monotonous. At least with the Canned Responses lab, you reduce some of your time in tedium by building templates you can efficiently revise. This will allow you to build your emails quickly without the need of re-typing or copy/pasting repeatedly. Another great feature of this Lab is that you can create a filter that will use a Canned Response to auto-reply to emails with specific search criteria. Who wouldn’t want that?

#2: Insert Images
For a long time you could not add images in-line with text within an outgoing email and could only attach the file or photo to the email to download first before viewing. Enabling the insert images lab will add a little picture icon across the top of the Compose section that will allow you to embed images into your email. You can insert and attach from your PC or from an URL on a website. Now you can paste those funny Memes to your fellow co-workers quickly and make them readily viewable.

#1: Signature Tweaks
When you first compose your email after creating a Signature in your Email Settings, your signature shows up at the bottom of the email. When you reply to an email, though, your quoted text shows up above the Signature that you thoughtfully made. The recipient will need to scroll down to the bottom of the email in order to find your contact information or to just marvel at your creation. Signature Tweaks under Gmail Labs places the Signature above the Quoted text so that it will always show up to your recipients just below the new email or email response.

There are quite a few more Gmail Labs available in the list presented to you under your Email Settings > Labs tab in your Google Mail account. So what are you waiting for? Go on and enable some Gmail Labs for yourself.

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.”



Greenleaf was looking at finding better tools for their employees who were always on the go, to help them stay on top of projects and reports at their many locations.

“I was already familiar with the many benefits of Google Apps, and I already knew of Newmind as a Google Apps partner,” Michael continued. “In the end it really boiled down to cost being the most significant factor in our decision. Google Apps was 30% less than the cost of Office365, and only half the cost of using a self-managed Exchange server. When we calculated the ROI, we discovered Apps would pay for itself in only 18 months.”

Greenleaf Hospitality Group decided to make the switchover with a well-planned “rip and replace” strategy. “Only a dozen or so users had been given a preview of the new tools,” Michael said. “But everything went as smoothly as we could have imagined it to go. The Exchange server caused complete data migration to take longer than we would have liked,  but the entire cutover took four hours at the most.”

“Having Newmind Group manage our deployment was a critical success factor,” Michael goes on to say, “Doing it ourselves would have been possible, but there were a lot of ‘gotcha’ moments that would have delayed our efforts. Having Newmind Group involved helped us plan and get those roadblocks out of the way. Newmind’s assistance with training was also essential. They enabled a seamless, smooth process.”

The biggest benefit Greenleaf has seen since their move to Google Apps has been that now all of the employees can access their email from any device, anywhere. “As an IT guy, I really appreciate the freedom I can now give my colleagues to use what they like. The Android people are happy, the iPhone people are happy. Plus, my IT staff are happy now that we no longer have to support old devices that were losing their value and functionality.” Michael explains.

Prior to the switch, Greenleaf employees were locked into using antiquated devices as their only option for handhelds. They were difficult to work on and incapable of performing the functions employees yearned for, but the company was locked in. They had zero choices if they wanted to be able to access their email. If an off-site employee didn’t have a company-issued device they were forced to trudge through a complex vpn connection. One employee recounted a time when, in the legacy system, they were out of the office and needed to check their email. “After an hour of unsuccessfully trying to connect to the Exchange mail server with the vpn, I simply gave up,” the employee said. “When I returned to work the next day I discovered that there had been a crisis in my absence. Because of my inability to access my email, what could have taken seconds to clear up (with Google Apps) instead took days to rectify.”

By harnessing the power of the cloud, Google Apps has enabled Greenleaf Hospitality Group staff members to access their email, calendar, and documents from any device anywhere in the world.
In terms of delving deep into all of their new tools, Greenleaf’s training intentionally only covered the basics, leaving employees with the freedom to explore everything else on their own. “Now we’re starting to see widespread adoption. Chat was the big one to become adopted first, and now we’re starting to see people using forms. A lot of users are not computer savvy, but the fact that they are finding these tools on their own and are using them is amazing,” Michael says. “We’re lucky to have users that are used to and willing to accept change.”

“In hindsight, I can honestly say that every aspect of switching to Google Apps with Newmind went really well. The biggest success factor for me is that on the switchover day our CEO was on vacation and was able to get his email. He was on a boat, in Alaska, in the middle of nowhere, and he was able to get his email and reply to it,” Michael laughs. “In fact, as an organization we decided we should use this project as a tool to measure all future projects on how smooth and painless they should be.”

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.



Have you ever looked at your inbox and have been anxious by how many messages needed some sort of action?

Have you ever found yourself looking at your folders that originally worked, but because of changes over time, no longer work perfectly and thought to yourself, “I need to re-organize these,” then just never find the time?

You are not alone. With email being an important part of our daily business, it has become necessary to have an efficient method of managing and processing those messages. Without an effective system, email bankruptcy ( aka email fatigue ) becomes a threat and important messages can be missed.

This is where I personally found Inbox Zero plus the tools of email powered by Google Apps to be extremely useful. Instead of having extensive and unwieldy folder trees that require time to maintain. Inbox Zero only needs a small handful of folders (labels).

Between the few folders (labels in Gmail) needed with Inbox Zero and the powerful search tools of Gmail, my inbox is always manageable and clean. I don’t know about you, but I like having a clean inbox.

I had a client not too long ago give Inbox Zero a try. He ran for about two weeks with inbox zero in one of his Google Accounts using the Gmail interface and used his old method of managing email in Outlook with another account. After the trial he informed me that he can no longer take using his old method. He continued by saying he would physically become ill every time he opened up Outlook and how happy he is now with Inbox Zero with Gmail.

So, I have to ask you, do you want to take the challenge and find a new method of managing your email?

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.

Where should I buy my Google Apps licenses?
	Google	Newmind
Google's innovative communication and collaboration tools	✓	✓
Allow Credit Card payments	✓	✓
Allow Check payments		✓
Quick and easy resolution to billing questions	maybe	every time
Email based ticket support*	✓	✓
Immediate human support*		✓
Able to escalate support requests		✓
Complimentary User Training Live Webinars		✓
Complimentary Office Hours Q&A Sessions		✓
App Integration Advice		✓
App Integration deployment, customization, and training		✓
Email Archiving and Security	✓	✓
Total Cost Per User	$50	$50

Billing
Google offers automated credit card payments only, whereas with Newmind you can pay and renew with credit card or check. Pay your bill the way your Accounting Department finds most comfortable.

Support
Answers to your questions can be found in forums from time to time, or you can send Google an email and wait. Working with Newmind as your Google Partner allows you to use our connections at Google and "escalate" support requests on your behalf. Newmind also offers enhanced phone support and end user helpdesk support for an additional fee.

Training
Google Apps is an amazing suite of applications that ease communication and collaboration. We adore it and that's why we became a Google Partner. There are two things that Google doesn't do though: Deployments and Training. Newmind offers a variety of training options, so you can choose what's best for your environment and budget: live webinars, on-site training, or eLearning videos and courseware. Even after the deployment is over and you're on your way to becoming an Apps Wizard in your own right, Newmind offers ongoing education for our customers through our training portal. 

Integration Advice
Wondering what Marketplace add-ons would be a good fit for your businesses' need? Just ask. Newmind is happy to provide advice and guidance regarding which additional applications integrate best with Google Apps. We'll also customize, deploy, and train your staff on these applications for an additional fee. 

Google Security and Archiving
You can go to Google directly for security and archiving, but there's a hearty minimum to that order to the tune of $1500. Newmind can offer that same service for organizations with as few as 5 users. 

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. 



“Stern is a pretty small company.” says Joe Shields. “My mother-in-law, the owner, as well as the four other employees, aren’t particularly tech savvy. Their strengths lie in helping their clients. In fact, they’d probably say they are more comfortable with a pen and paper than a mouse and keyboard. I can get around a computer decently enough so I’ve ended up as the de facto tech go-to guy for the business.”

For a long time, Stern had been using an online Exchange solution (Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite, or BPOS)  and were pleased with their choice. In fact, the only time they would even think about the system that supported them was when they’d forget their password and need it reset. It worked for them. They were fine with their system, that is, until the service they were using became Office365, and they were forced to migrate. 


“When Microsoft moved us to Office365 the problems started immediately.” Joe explains. “We couldn’t get it to work on our Macs, in particular, and even our PC users had issues accessing their emails.” Like any rational person, Joe’s first step was to call customer service. “Dealing with the Office365 customer service department was, frankly, laughable. Every time we called we were given a different case number, so each phone call required us to explain and re-explain our issue with each case never properly tracked.” says Joe. Microsoft was nice enough to copy Stern Estate on internal emails discussing the case. Nice, right? Sure, except that the emails they were being copied on were private discussions between Microsoft employees, scolding each other on not handling the Stern case properly. They were unwittingly cc’ing Stern, detailing their own errors!




“After a month of back and forth with the Office365 customer service, we were finally able to figure out that the reason we were having trouble accessing our email was because, apparently, while they could confirm payment of the licenses with billing, they were unable to verify those same licenses in our account, ” Joe continues. “I was relieved to have finally found the issue but at the same time I was pretty frustrated because we had lost a month’s worth of email. Sterns’ revenue was heavily impacted simply because Microsoft couldn’t effectively communicate our purchase of Office365 licenses to the necessary people. We weren’t even new customers. We had a history with them of always paying our bills on time before they made us switch from a hosted Exchange to Office365.”

“Well we finally knew what the issue was, but they still couldn’t get their ducks in a row and we still couldn’t get our emails flowing. We were looking at $80,000 in lost business with no resolution in sight. That was it for me. We contacted Newmind Group and one of their engineers, Steve, got us started on the switch to Google Apps for Business.” says Joe. “The first thing Steve and I had to do was to get Stern Estate’s email backlog out of Office365 and migrated into Google Apps, but we even had problems with the Office365 people there. They basically threw up roadblocks and wouldn’t allow us access to our own data while they ‘tried’ to get it working,” Joe explains. 

In desperation, Joe emailed Bill Gates.

Joe acknowledges that his email likely never made it to Bill Gates, so it may just be a coincidence, but after that email, Microsoft seemed to get their act together a bit. “I finally started to see movement. Steve and I stayed persistent and the Office365 people finally allowed us access to our information,” Joe says.

“I’m relieved and happy to say that after all that, Steve and I were able to get all the Stern employees up and running in Google Apps and finally able to access their email again. And since our migration to Apps, the service has been seamless. Furthermore,” Joe concludes, “we are very happy with the technical skill and experience that Steve and Newmind provided us. Steve made coming out of a very difficult situation much less painful. He explained things clearly and concisely, without any talking down to our less technical staff members.”

Stern Estate contacted Microsoft again, after their exit from Office365, to try and negotiate a reimbursement for the month of lost business that they suffered during the time that 365 was inaccessible. Microsoft was kind enough to offer them a little something for their trouble. Apparently that little something would have roughly covered a round of lattes for the staff. 


Emails from Microsoft are still coming to Joe too. They’re very eager to work out the licensing issue and think they’re thiiiiiiiis close to figuring it out.

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:

>>> LETTER TO MANAGEMENT - FEEDBACK FROM 1ST-TIME CALLER

To whom it may concern,

I don't do this often, but I feel I should forward a commendation on the performance of one of your front-line customer reps, namely Nicolas Yarosz.

My issue was "passed off" by the Google support team, and I was instructed to call your firm, thus I expected, well, not the best. I was surprised.

Nicolas was courteously proactive, wading through my decades-wandering IT babble, and providing me with sound, balanced advice. I'd made it clear that the services I required were for a start-up company, but Nicolas treated me as if I was calling from a Big Account. That was cool. I'd called 15 minutes to closing time, but Nicolas didn't hurry, offering me concrete solutions and answering my resultant questions. His presentation of your company's services was flawless.

My creds: I've been training phone reps since 1988, then hitting the tech support floors in 1996 at CompuServe, where I co-wrote the book on Quality Customer Service. I've managed at MS, and my UCLA degree is in Psychology, specialization in Human-computer Interaction (Usability). Therefore, I do know what I'm saying, when I say: hold on to Nicolas. I see in him a teacher; a person who can explain important nuances of the trade to his coworkers, despite the fact that his experience at this point is "under construction." (That never stopped me.)

In conclusion, I'm very pleased with the first-line treatment I received from your company, thanks to Nicolas. Even if I decide to go with your solutions only at a later date, I will certainly recommend calling your firm, to any of my clients, immediately.

Kudos to all of you.

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...


Google and Samsung paired up again and just released the second generation of Chromebooks. These new devices bear a striking resemblance to their predecessor, but with a nice processor upgrade and 4GB memory upgrade that for you translates into speed. Faster browsing, faster start up, and faster response times.

What else should you expect?

• better scaling and multi window support
• app launcher bar with ability to pin apps
• support to view more file formats
• Google Drive support
• Google Docs offline support coming soon!
• new media player
• built in photo editor and uploader

In addition to the new Chromebook device, Google and Samsung are also unveiling the Chromebox. The Chromebox is a small and portable pc that can connect to any keyboard, mouse, or monitor. It boasts Bluetooth, 6 USB 2.0 ports, HDMI & DVI output, and 4GB Ram among other goodies.

There are also some changes afoot regarding the pricing structure for the admin panel that will be a nice boon to organizations who manage fleets of Chromebooks.

With all of these announcements and press releases hitting the tech news and blogs, Newmind is ready for your inevitable questions. Click here and let us know what’s on your mind.

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. 


Intimidated at the thought of uploading all your info to Drive? Google thought of that too. You download and install the Drive App, and voila! All of your Drive files are located on your local computer. After that, you just move files onto your local Drive, then leave them to sync to the cloud on their own. The cloud Drive and the local Drive are always in sync so all your stuff is just there whenever you need it, wherever you need it.

The exciting part about Drive too is that Google doesn’t want you to just be able to store your files on the cloud, they want you to be able to edit your files on the cloud! How cool is it to be able to walk into a coffee shop, order up a large salted caramel mocha (yum!), then fire up your massive AutoCAD file and start editing it on the cloud. The same goes for image editing. With a single (free!) Chrome Web Store add on, you can clone, heal, blur, and adjust the levels of your psd files. I’m not even kidding.

What does this mean if you’re on Google Apps?

Drive can be the glue that ties Google Apps together. Yes, GMail is great, and what would you do without Calendar? Even Sites and Blogger are powerful tools, but Drive creates a foundation that gives those other tools a whole new level of functionality. Collaborate on and share any of your files, not just Docs files. Even search through your files using Google’s powerful search algorithms and Drive’s character recognition.

Apps users will love the way Drive integrates with their workflow. I know I do. I can attach photos and images from Drive to posts in Google+ and into Docs that I’m creating. They’re saying that soon we’ll be able to attach directly into Gmail from Drive too.

Drive has the same infrastructure as the other Google Apps services you already use, meaning it has the same management tools, security, uptime guarantee, data replication, and 24/7 support. 

How do you get more storage?

The short answer here is to contact Newmind Group. Drive is still very new, and depending on your organization’s new feature roll out preferences it might be hard to find all of the settings on your own. Directions for doing this yourself are out there, but with redesigns of the control panel underway right now, you might be setting yourself up for a little frustration.

Google starts each Apps user off with 5GB of storage for free and administrators can purchase and manage more storage for the team (Google Docs don’t count against the storage quota). That would be enough for 1000 songs, some hi-res scans of your baby pictures, your resume and work samples, and your archive of college term papers. If you want to upgrade for some more room to breathe, you can add 20GB for $4/per month up to the monster storage solution 16TB.

If your Apps account uses online monthly billing, you can activate Google Drive storage licenses on a flexible plan, meaning that you only get charged for the licenses that are actively assigned to users. 

If your account uses the annual billing, you buy a set number of Drive storage licences for the year and assign or reassign that storage as you like throughout the year. The rub with the annual plan is that all of the storage licenses you purchase, even one purchased months after the initial purchase, will expire on the same date as the original subscription, and all purchases are non-refundable, so it's important to know your users and their habits before you buy storage for them. 

There will undoubtedly be things coming down the pipe fast and furious from the Drive Team (and I suggest download links a la Dropbox), but fresh out of the gate it's a pretty big game changer when used in conjunction with Apps for Business. 

What about the diskettes? I think I saw on Instructables on how to make a tote out of them. Emailing yourself files? Get the Drive. 

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.

When you don't get the casual face time that a lot of people take for granted, it shines a spotlight on how many decisions get made in those dismissible few seconds throughout the day. As e-commuting and super-computing become more of a norm though, how are you collaborating? Chat and email are handy, but when you need to group edit a document, are you each saving your own copy then tasking one person with merging them at the end (then doing it all over again on the next revision)?

I sat in on a conference call with an area business the other day to review a proof of a proposal from a "team" of businesses. The heads of each business huddled around their respective speaker phones and stared at their respective screens to page through the preliminary pdf proposal. They discussed the changes that needed to be made and divvied up the list of who would complete each task. How could this have been simpler?

These are the key workflow issues that Google Apps embraces. Collaboration is powerful. I'll say that again: Collaboration is POWERFUL. The sum of the team's experience, knowledge, and savvy is the force a company has to leverage over its competition. If the ability to collaborate and contribute to that sum has become so cumbersome and anti-intuitive that the product suffers, so will your success.

Linux is a brilliant example of what will happen when talent joins forces and works together toward a common goal, while still letting each person work in his or her specialty.

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.

"It’s a very excited time to work at Newmind," said Daniel Jefferies, Newmind's founder. "Our clients are seeing dramatic cost savings of 30-40%, strong productivity improvements and I'm seeing many of them get genuine enjoyment out of working with the leading cloud computing solutions and platforms that we are helping them implement. It’s a lot of fun."

“Nine Lives Media and MSPmentor congratulate Newmind Group for its leadership position in North America,” said Amy Katz, president of Nine Lives Media, a division of Penton Media. “In the fiercely competitive IT services market, these MSPs represent the best of the best.”

As a managed service provider, Newmind takes a personal interest in finding custom solutions for their clients and strives to simplify clients’ cumbersome tasks in addition to saving them money. Newmind’s staff of Certified Trainers, Certified Deployment Specials, and custom development teams bring their enthusiasm for technology into every task and project they tackle, working with businesses large and small to make their work more productive, profitable, and fun.

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.