You found us . . . congrats . . . now make calls

[marcelo]

If you're here, you are adventurous and intrepid.

You probably found the news on iPhoneAtlas (or any of the half dozen or so that followed), hopped on your iPhone, signed up and clicked around on the web app and discovered this forum.

We're not advertising RingFree (or do we just call it RF? One of the hundreds of things we're still mulling. There is no marketing to speak of. So we're not actively seeking new users (not yet).

But we are pretty glad your here. We think we have a nifty little web app for the iPhone here that takes full advantage of the powerful visual framework Apple's handheld toy offers.

We're not finished by any means. We plan on expanding outside the United States very soon (but not until we have a couple of paying customers so we can afford the overseas phone numbers and trunks. We'll be adding other services (like that closed-door point-to-point service eBay owns). French. German. Castellano. And more.

But there's a lot you can already do with RingFree. And you do not even need a Voice over IP provider to take advantage of many of the features. Just by signing up at https://rf.com on your iPhone, and without defining any providers or PBXes in your call settings, you can, for example (click the CALL button after any of these):

• Make SIP URI calls: Just enter the sip address;
• Make Google Talk calls: Enter <username>@gmail.com in the address bar;
• Make Yahoo! Messenger calls: Enter <username>@yahoo.com in the address bar;
• Make MSN Messenger calls: Enter <username>@msn.com or <username>@hotmail.com in the address bar (we'll be adding other MSN addresses soon);
• Make FWD calls: Enter *323<fwd-number> in the dialer.

If you use a VoIP service now, you may be able to use your iPhone and RingFree to make calls through it. It's really up to the service provider. Two things:

Your service provider must share your user name and password with you Many do, but some out of what some see as an utterly unnecessary fit of paranoia, just send you "locked" devices, like the old telephone monopolies used to do.

The service provider must also allow you to make calls through their service without being constantly registered with their servers. Again, this is hit and miss.

In our Call Settings page, we have listed VoIP providers we know work with us. There are probably hundreds of others. Try yours out and let us know the results on these pages.

If you have an account on an Asterisk box (and if you don't know what that means, you probably don't have one), using RingFree is a snap. ust choose 'Add Your Own" from the Calling Services menu in Settings, enter the proxy and your credentials, and you're off. This will also work with Communigate Pro and other IP-based PBXes.

At some point, we do expect to charge a nominal annual fee for using RingFree. But for now, it's free. Everyone will get 30 days free trial. But until we start charging, your usage does not count against the trial period.

So have fun. And please help us make RingFree better by joining in on the forum.