Recommended Provider List Moving to a New Home

By Wayne Maruna

It’s 2019, a new year, and as is often the case with new years, changes are afoot.  For several years now I have provided Tabmail subscribers access to a web page called Tabmail.info in which one can find the names and phone numbers of recommended service providers. I wrote an article for the August, 2018 issue of the Taberna Tribune, begging people to please note and remember the web address for that site, and it seems to have actually helped to reduce the number of ‘Tabmails’ asking repetitious questions about service providers.  Additionally, I found a way to tack that web address to most ‘Tabmails’, so that probably helped too.

Well now I am going to muddy the waters and move that list of recommended providers.  Why, you ask?  Well, what motivates most things in capitalist America?  If you guessed money, you are right.  The web hosting service I have been using for Tabmail.info was acquired by another company, and as such things go, the associated price is increasing.  I’ve had to fight with the acquired company in the past to get them to suppress price increases, and frankly I'm tired of it.  I’ve decided to find another way, a cheaper way…as in free.  

Google allows people with Google accounts to have a certain amount of free ‘cloud’ space.  Much of that space gets consumed with my Gmail account because I am a pack rat when it comes to saved emails. (Note to self:  clean out your doggone saved emails!) But I also use some of my allocated space for what is called my Google Drive, which is space where I can save and selectively share files.  So I am moving the contents of Tabmail.info to my Google Drive. It will be in the form of a spreadsheet variety 'Google Doc'.

You will be able to access the info on my Google drive, but you will no longer navigate to www.tabmail.info.  That link will be going away in late January, 2019. Instead, Google will allow me to create a ‘shareable link’, and anyone with that shareable link can get to the recommended provider list.  To use that shareable link, you will need to create a shortcut on your computer’s desktop (or alternately, go to the website and save it as a Favorite or Bookmark, depending on the term your browser uses.)

To create the desktop shortcut on a Windows PC, follow these instructions:

Find an open spot on your computer’s desktop (screen) and RIGHT click your mouse.  In the context menu that pops up, hover your mouse over the word ‘New’ and another context menu will appear. Then LEFT click on the word ‘Shortcut’. This will cause another box to open, where you will be directed to type the location of the item.  Please enter the following exactly as it shows here:  https://tinyurl.com/y8sm67vd .  The actual web address is much longer and practically a typing test, but I was able to make it manageable using the very handy tinyurl website.

Once you have the above letters and symbols entered, left click on ‘Next’. This will bring up another box which will ask you to enter a name for the shortcut.  You can enter anything you want, but I would suggest Recommended Providers.  Once entered, click on Finish and you are done.  You will now have a clickable link on your desktop.  Double click it, and it will take you to the list of recommended providers on my Google Drive.

If you are running a Mac or Mac Mini:

Open the Safari web browser and size it so that you can still see a part of your desktop. In Safari, enter https://tinyurl.com/y8sm67vd in the address bar and allow it to open the provider page.  Now, select the entire address shown in the address bar at the top of the browser.  You select the address by left clicking once on the address, which should then turn blue.  Now left click and drag the address onto the desktop and release the mouse button. A shortcut to the provider page will be created, though it will be named something like docs.google.com/.webloc.  You can change that name by right clicking the shortcut, then left clicking Rename, and replace the existing name with Recommended Providers or another name of your choosing.

If you are running Linux, follow these instructions which are based on Ubuntu:

Right click on an open area of the desktop.  In the context box that appears, left click on ‘Create Launcher’.  Another box will appear.  For ‘Type’, select Location from the drop-down box.  For Name, enter Recommended Providers (or a name of your choosing).  Next to Command, enter https://tinyurl.com/y8sm67vd and then click OK.  Easy peasy.

Note that this Google Drive file is available today if you want to get ahead of the curve.