Free Canadian Phone Number (with Free Calling capabilities)

Quite a few people ask me about all the phone numbers that I have as well as the costs associated with the phone numbers. I've already written about magicJack, Skype, some of my GSM service providers, etc. so I thought that I would mention freephoneline.ca.

Freephoneline.ca is a service that I've used to get a free phone number in Toronto. You can see all the free features offered by this service on their website. Using a softphone computer program which can be downloaded from the company's website, you are able to make/receive calls. When you are not logged into the softphone program, you can configure the software to forward to certain Canadian phone numbers free of charge. This is what I did with my Toronto number. I would set it to automatically forward to my Montreal number. This way, people in Toronto could call me in Montreal for free. Unfortunately because I didn't actively use the program, the company canceled my free Toronto phone number.

The company allows 1 free phone number per household. During the registration process, you are asked for the standard personal information (name, address, e-mail address, and contact phone number). You are not asked for any credit card information. Using the contact phone number and your e-mail address, the system calls you in order to complete the authentication process.

The company will continue to conduct their verification process and if the company detects any discrepancies with the registration information that you've provided, you will receive an e-mail informing you that your account has been deleted/canceled even though you've already authenticated yourself via e-mail and via your personal contact phone number.

Based on the information that I've read, the freephoneline.ca service also works with ATA SIP adapter. Unfortunately I've never verified this although I did download the ATA configuration instructions. Using the provided Canadian phone number in your ATA SIP adapter is free as long as you limit your calls to Canadian numbers. It is something that I am looking at trying, if I ever purchase an unlocked ATA VoIP adapter. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, the company deleted/canceled my account because of non-use so I will have to get a new free Canadian phone number when I get a chance.

I've also never used the softphone feature. I would assume that the audio quality is similar to the audio quality obtained by other VoIP solutions like Skype, magicJack, etc.

The only thing that I've used the freephoneline.ca service was to forward the Toronto number that they provided me to one of my Montreal numbers. I found that this worked well although once or twice people have informed me that they've called me at the Toronto number and according to them the phone was ringing but my Montreal phone did not ring nor was the call forwarded to my Montreal voice mail box. I find the audio quality of a forwarded call to be good. There was the occasional problem but this might have been due to me forwarding my Toronto number to a Montreal cellphone that had poor coverage.

My actual suggestion for anyone who wants a free Canadian phone number is to install the softphone onto their PC and have it log into their server occasionally in order to keep your account active. I didn't do this since I was only using their service as a free Toronto forwarding phone number to one of my Montreal phone numbers.

If you have any questions/comments regarding this blog entry, please don't hesitate to leave a comment in the comments section.

PalmOne Treo 680 Review

I've been a long time user/fan of the PalmOS platform and I've been using my Palm Treo 680 for approximately 2 years. My previous PalmOS based smartphone was a Palm Treo 650. Before that, I was using a Treo 600 and prior to the Treo 600, I was using a Handspring VisorPhone.

One of the reasons why I purchased my Treo 680 is because I had purchased/found a lot of programs over the years that I wanted to continue using. Even though my Treo 650 was not broken, the Treo 680 had dropped in price and I found that the amount of memory was limited in my Treo 650 (~32MB on the Treo 650 as opposed to ~64MB on the Treo 680).

The Treo 680 is a PDA with quad band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz bands) GSM phone functions. In terms of the carrier's data network, the Treo 680 supports GPRS and EDGE. It does not support 3G nor does it support WiFi. Out of the box, it does not have GPS capabilities but with the proper software and a bluetooth GPS module, the Treo 680 can be used as a GPS.

The Treo 680 runs the PalmOS version 5.4.9. The processor is the XScale processor and the display is 320 x 320 (~64K colors). It comes with approximately 64MB of non-volatile internal memory. It has an SD slot (on the side) which supports SD cards and SDHC cards up to 4GB. The camera is capable of taking pictures 640 x 480 in size with a 2x optical zone. In my opinion, the picture quality is not very good but I generally don't use my cellphones to take pictures unless absolutely necessary.

I find the PalmOS to be relatively stable and most users can find almost any program that they want (provided that the PalmOS hardware supports that feature). For example, if you are looking for a stock program that updates via the internet, your PalmOS hardware must be capable of accessing the internet.

The Treo 680 comes with the built-in standard PalmOS PDA programs (Contacts, Datebook/Agenda, Tasks, Memo/Notes, WorldClock, etc.). It also includes an MP3 playing program called pTunes Basic v3.09 as well as an Microsoft Office compatible program called "Documents To Go Ver 8". If you want to use the MP3 playing program and regular headphones, you will need a 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter. There are also other programs including an internet enabled web applications like"Web" (which is the built-in PalmOS browser) and a built-in e-mail program. The Treo 680 synchronizes with a PC via a special PalmOne proprietary USB cable or via bluetooth. Certain built-in programs as well as third party programs have conduits which when the user performs a synchronization with a computer, the program will also access the internet to get the information (ex: stock quotes, RSS feeds, e-mail, etc.)

What I like about the Treo 680 is the abundance of programs available for it. I've collected quite a few programs over the 8 years that I've been using the PalmOS platform. I have various multilingual dictionaries, games, etc.

What I find lacking about the Treo 680 is that it doesn't have wi-fi. This means that the only way to access the internet is to use the cellphone service provider's data service since some providers (such as Rogers) lock the ability of using bluetooth to access internet via their customized firmware.

If you have any questions/comments regarding this blog entry, please don't hesitate to leave a comment in the comments section.