October 6, 2007

Our New TOGnews E-mail

Hello, Tayana owners and friends:

Are you pining for the old days when the Tayana Forum sent you individual e-mails? Our new TOGnews E-mail at Google Groups <http://groups.google.com/group/tognews> is beckoning you back to the listserv days in an updated, modern format.

You are receiving this invitation, because you are a member of TOGnews.com. For years we enjoyed a list of almost 500 Tayana owners who shared problems, solutions, and the love for our boats. We hope to rebuild that community at our new TOGnews E-mail. We will still maintain the TOGnews.com site for FTP files, owners’ manuals, reference documents, and other features.

We chose a Group format over a Do-It-Yourself solution for several reasons. 
1.	Sara Johnson ran our TOGnews.com website for a few years. She and her husband, Michael, and their new family served us well, but sold their boat and moved on. TOGnews.com could not handle the volume of emails we generated with a 500-member group and, once we lost our capability for individual e-mails, we never could get it back reliably.
2.	With Google Groups, you can choose to receive no e-mails, a daily digest, or each e-mail individually. TOGnews E-mail will appear almost exactly like the TOGnews.com e-mails, except now you can send and receive pictures and files, or you can post them on the website so others can view them only if interested. While you’re away sailing, you can change to a daily digest format and check the Google Groups website directly for the complete e-mails. Photographs are displayed as thumbnails with the size noted, so you can judge whether your marina’s bandwidth can afford you a quick look.
3.	Photos and files can be attached to your e-mail replies for all to see. Just remember to keep the picture sizes down to 100 kb or smaller. If you need a larger format, post the picture in the Files section, and refer to them in an embedded URL, or send them to Harvey to post on the TOGnews FTP site.
4.	It’s free. There will never be a charge to you, since you and other owners like you own the group.

So…please join our new TOGnews E-mail!

There are two ways to join:
1.	Create a Google profile or if you already have one. Navigate to TOGnews E-mail <http://groups.google.com/group/tognews> and sign in to Google Groups or create a new Google profile. Click on “Apply for Group Membership”. This allows you to see archived messages, a member list, photos, files, and other valuable information. If you don’t create a profile, you won’t be able to access the group’s web-based functions, since we set up the group as ‘members only’ to protect our privacy and e-mail addresses.
2.	Without creating a Google profile, you may subscribe to group e-mail. You will be able to send and receive group e-mails, but not access the group's web-based functions. Send an e-mail to tognews-subscribe@googlegroups.com. 

Remember, we still have the forum, FTP, and other features at our other site, TOGnews.com. You need to become a member there as well.

We hope to see you soon. Please contact us off-list, if you have any questions or problems joining.

Fair winds, Harvey, Wayne, John, Jim, and Bruce
sitemaster@tognews.com