Peter's Useful Crap

Last updated: July 22, 2013

I used to go to canadiancontent.net for this information, but that site never gets updated anymore and seems to have turned into a Google AdSense cash grab. So here’s a list of links where you can send free SMSs to cell phones from the different Canadian wireless providers:

(Note: the recipient might get charged, of course, depending on their specific plan)

• Bell Mobility (should work for Solo Mobile too)
• Rogers Wireless (works for Fido too)
• TELUS Mobility
• Koodo Mobile
• SaskTel

E-mail to text

There are some e-mail to text services, but the recipient usually has to have signed up and paid for this service, unlike the web forms above that are free:

[10digitnumber]@txt.bell.ca (Bell and Solo)
[10digitnumber]@pcs.rogers.com
[10digitnumber]@sms.fido.ca
[10digitnumber]@msg.telus.com
[10digitnumber]@vmobile.ca (Virgin Mobile)
[10digitnumber]@mobiletxt.ca (PC Mobile)
[10digitnumber]@msg.koodomobile.com
[10digitnumber]@sms.sasktel.com and [10digitnumber]@pcs.sasktelmobility.com
[10digitnumber]@text.mts.net (MTS Allstream Inc./ Manitoba Telecom Services Inc.)
[10digitnumber]@txt.windmobile.ca (you have to active it first)

Note that, as reported in the comments, some providers (such as Fido) are forcing the recipient to pay an extra monthly fee in order to receive e-mail to text messages.

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Know of any other providers’ text message links or e-mail formats? Leave a comment to let me know!

There is no official form to send text messages through the Internet to other providers such as 7-Eleven Speak Out Wireless or Petro Canada.

It is argued that there are many reasons why register_globals should be set to off on your PHP installation. It’s a bit of a security risk and allows you to code sloppily (although this is kind of nice for amateur coders like me).

However, another reason to avoid having register_globals set to on is a rather weird variable overwrite feature. If you use a session variable in a script with the same name as one of your global variables, the session variable will overwrite the global variable! Oddly, neither the GET nor POST variables affect the global variable in the same way…

<?php
session_start();
$canadaday = 'July 1st';
$_SESSION['canadaday'] = 'July 2nd';

print '<p>When is Canada Day?</p>';
print '<p><strong>' . $canadaday . '</strong></p>';

?>

(In this case, you should probably be using different variable names too.)

With register_globals set to on, Canada Day is erroneously on July 2nd…

I’ve raved before about free and cheap long-distance calls with JAJAH. If you have an existing JAJAH account and a cell phone, it’s worth checking out two JAJAH services for cell phones: JAJAH Mobile Web and JAJAH Mobile Plugin.

The way JAJAH works, you activate a call through its website and JAJAH phones both parties. This way, many calls are free (if both parties have an account on jajah.com) since neither party actually has to make the call. JAJAH does charge a fee between some destinations, and a higher fee if you’re calling or using a cell phone. But the rates are usually pretty darn good. The disadvantage, of course, is that you have to have access to a computer to initiate the call.

Given that many cell phone plans give you free (or cheap) incoming calls, you can take advantage of the JAJAH model for cell phones for when you’re out and about. If you have Internet access on your cell phone, read about using JAJAH Mobile Web to initiate calls through mobile.jajah.com. If you’re in Canada, this is the only option at the moment, as the other option — JAJAH Mobile Plugin — only worked for me while I was travelling in Europe (more details below).

I have a Motorola v186m, so I tested JAJAH Mobile Plugin, which allowed me to initiate calls by using its Java plugin to send JAJAH an SMS. The difficult part was getting the Java plugin onto my cell phone, which took a bit of reading on the JAJAH forums. I don’t really recall that process much, except that I successfully used the V3 RAZR version of the Java plugin on my v186m (which wasn’t on the list). (If you have questions about how to get the plugin onto your cell phone, please use the JAJAH forums.)

There is an SMS number for the service in Europe and the United States but not for Canada (I confirmed this with Jajah’s customer support). But all is not lost — I managed to call Canada and Hong Kong on my cell phone through JAJAH Mobile Plugin while I was in France.

After installing the plugin on my cell phone, I made sure that the “Mobile” entry on my jajah.com account was set to my cell phone number while in France.

Then, here’s how I placed a call on my phone:

1. Open the JAJAH Mobile plugin:

2. Specify the correct country code of my cell phone (which at the time was the one for France):

3. Enter in the number I want to call:

4. Confirm that I want to use the SMS way of initiating the call:

My cell phone then rang. After I picked up the phone, my destination number started ringing. Success!

How much did it cost? There are two sources that could charge me: JAJAH and my cell phone service provider in France (which was Bouygues Telecom). As is the case with most cell phone plans in France (and other places in Europe), incoming calls were free with my cell phone service provider. I was charged 0.30 Euro for the SMS sent to JAJAH to initiate the call. On the JAJAH end, the rates when using French cell phones are decent but not great — it was 17.9 cents per minute. But I still consider it to be a success because it was more convenient than buying a phone card and cheaper than if I’d phoned Canada or Hong Kong on my cell phone from France without going through JAJAH.

My verdict on JAJAH Mobile Plugin

Depending on where you are, where you’re calling, and whether you’re tech-eager enough to set it up, JAJAH Mobile Plugin can be cheap and convenient. For example, when I was in London, the Orange Call Abroad plan was cheaper (although JAJAH would have been a good backup if I’d run out of credit on my Call Abroad plan). If support for JAJAH Mobile Plugin ever comes to Canada, I’ll be sure to try it because the JAJAH rate from Canadian cell phones to many destinations is $0.

Two of the online banks that I use — Citizens Bank and ING Direct — have recently implemented the option for customers to stop receiving paper statements! Well, it’s about time.

Here’s how to go green with ING Direct:

Log in to your account, hover over the Change my info & options tab, then select the Statement Mailing Preferences option. From there, it should be straightforward:

Here’s how to go green with Citizens Bank:

Log in to your account, click on the Member Services tab, then click the Change Statement Options link on the left menu. From there, you have a few more options, but it’s still pretty straightforward:

For me, it didn’t quite work out with the whole paperless thing at Citizens Bank. This was their reply:

“Please note that according to Citizens Bank policy, any Member who has a Line of Credit (LOC) or overdraft protection attached to her or his account number cannot opt out of receiving paper statements. This is because legislative requirements state that an individual must receive a notice if she or he has any interest charges on the LOC.”

The law there makes sense, but I’ve never actually needed to use that overdraft protection feature (it comes with the Investment Account). How about tweaking the law so that your bank must send you a paper statement when you use your line of credit?

Subversion, being a rather techie product (version control mostly for programming code), can be a bit confusing to install if you’re not technically inclined. I installed it a few months ago on a Mac and then forgot how to do it when I had to install it again on a different Mac.

Well, Martin Ott provides easy installer packages for Subversion for Mac on his website (see the right sidebar). Download, double-click, and follow instructions in the easy GUI.

The only techie thing you *might* have to do is to type add something like “export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin” to the .profile file in your base user directory. This is so that you can type things like “svn co” instead of “/usr/local/bin/svn co”. And if you’re really not technically inclined, you can install something like SCPlugin for the Mac so that you don’t have to type the svn commands manually.