From the moment Eric Chamberlain and I got our hands on the initial production models of the iPhone and we got to working on RF.com, we’d been following Sadun’s TUAW columns on the iPhone closely. As seen from our perch, Sadun had as much to do with Apple’s decision to open up the iPhone to outside developers as anyone; her useful native applets that worked only on jail-broken iPhones must’ve certainly opened some eyes and minds in Cupertino — as it did ours.

These days, we’re busy testing iPhone 2.0, which prevents us from jailbreaking our phonesand running Sadun’s apps. Particularly missed is her simple but effective voice recorder application, which allows recording and keeping audio “notes” on the iPhone when writing is inconvenient (like when stuck for hours in Bay Area traffic or pushing a three-year-old on the park swing). Hopefully, when iPhone firmware 2.0 is released, we’ll be able to easily install Sadun’s little gems right from the Iphone App Store.

While working on her TUAW column, Sadun ran into problems with RF.com’s registration system. Over the past couple of months, the focus of our development attention has been on the feature set the RF dialer offers: Skype calling, GoogleTalk calling, SIP URI dialing, compatibility with Asterisk and other office PBX systems. We knew there were circumstances where registering with the RF.com server was dicey, but we chose to address those later.

Sadun wrote about RF.com, and she was quite nice — nicer than she might have been, anyway. She talked positively about what RF.com offers, and made it clear that, as a Beta program, there are still issues pending. She could have rightfully criticized us for the finicky, overly intrusive, registration system, but chose not to.

Still, Sadun’s registration experience, which she described to us when we spoke, got us to revamp the registration system from the ground up. And now, we think, we got it right.

The problem had been that the registration process relied too much on ever-changing database records, session variables, constant page loads and back-and-forth communications between the iPhone and our server. Unlike the RF Dialer itself, a self-contained “Web 2.0″ application that runs relatively glitch-free, the RF.com registration process was decidedly a “Web 1.0″ offering. We thought we made it simple. And simple it was — as long as everything went right.

But if any small went astray (say, a blip in network connectivity) or the user would do something perfectly normal but unforeseen by us (like pressing the back button at a specific point in the process), registration would fail. Worse, in a few circumstances, registrations lived in a partially finished state in our database, requiring manual record-level intervention so the iPhone user could try again.

Now the whole process has been significantly trimmed down, and relies much less on constant back-and-forth data communication between you iPhone and our servers.

The whole registration process now consists of three short text entry fields, a four-digit keypad entry, two simple pull-down menus, six button/text clicks, and only a single communication between iPhone and RF.com server. On a typical Edge network connection, registration should take about 60 seconds (less for those with nimbler thumbs). We think we’ve captured all potential hick-ups, and now present relatively seamless recovery when the unforeseen gets in the way.

Now we can’t wait for Erica Sadun — and anyone else who tried to register with RF.com and gave up in exasperation — to try again. And if you do find something we may have overlooked, let us know. This time we’ll fix it fast.

Yes, just in time for the announcement of a whole new iPhone at Apple’s World Wide Developer’ Conference, we’ve added Skype calling to the features available on RF.com.

And you don’t even need a Skype account to make a Skype call with RF.com.

The process is the same as calling a GoogleTalk or MSN Messenger friend with RF.com.

If your Skype “buddy” is online, you can call her by selecting Skype from the RF dialer pulldown menu, and entering her Skype user name in the dialer and clicking “Call”. Alternatively, you can bypass the the pulldown altogether by entering the call recipient’s user name followed by “@skype” (i.e.: SkypeBuddy@skype) and clicking the “Call” button.

As with all other services, you can add your Skype buddy to your list of “Favorites” on the RF dialer to reach her with a single click.

The outgoing call is actually made by RF.com’s own Skype account (which is why you don’t need your own Skype account to make a Skype call with RF.com), but we’ve made it so that the Skype user getting the call is notified, via an IM message immediately before the Skype “phone” rings, who is calling. For now, the recipient sees only your cell phone number, but we’ll be adding your name in the pseudo caller-ID in the future.

One caveat: Because of the way Skype works (its proprietary approach requires that we run a full Skype client on our servers for each current call), and because RF.com is still in Beta, the number of concurrent Skype calls we can handle is not open-ended. So, though we don’t anticipate this to be common, you may, particularly in peak calling times, have to try more than once to connect.

We’ve got creative ways of addressing this limitation that we’ll be implementing soon. And as we continue to grow, we’ll need them.

Tell us how Skype calling is working, and suggest any improvments, in the comments below.

Apparently, to some developers (and even some bloggers who write about such things, Here’s one, and another, and one more) “real VoIP” on an iPhone can only be achieved when the cell phone bypasses the cellular voice network altogether, and transmits and receives voice on the device over WiFi or the cell phone carrier’s data stream.

That this is “real VoIP” is an absurd notion on a few levels.

First, VoIP has been in use for many years, long before the term entered the realm of common technical lexicon, and well before Packet8, VoicePulse and Vonage — the companies that first offered consumer-level non-computer-bound IP communications services — brought VoIP to the masses. It is more than likely, if you made any international calls using one of the international Ma Bells over the past two decades, that you were on VoIP without even knowing it. The world’s communications giants have been using VoIP to cut their international transmission costs since shortly after the the IP network was established. What Packet8, VoicePulse and Vonage accomplished was to actually bring those cost-savings to the consumer, creating a whole new industry in the process.

Second, the use of the term “real VoIP” is fraught with contradiction. Is it “Real VoIP” when a conversation originates from a data-only connection (on an iPhone, for example), travels over the IP network to a telephone switch, then using analog telephone lines to reach its recipient on a plain old telephone? If so, then why isn’t the reverse — a conversation that originates from the cellular network, connects to a local switch where the stream is digitally converted and transmitted over VoIP to a recipient on an IM network like Google Talk — “real VoIP?”

Either “real VoIP” is a conversation that bypasses the traditional or cellular networks altogether (in which case even those calling themselves a “real VoIP” solution are fibbing), or it is a conversation that is carried somewhere along its path using VoIP.

Until the IP network totally replaces the traditional and cellular network as the method by which telephone calls are transmitted, we believe the latter to be the case (OK, not so coincidentally, making RF.com the first “real VoIP” solution for the iPhone).

But, ultimately, this debate over semantics is a non-starter. In the real world, what matters is what is of use to the most people in most circumstances. In bringing VoIP to the iPhone, we chose to maximize the benefits by following different paths (GSM versus WiFi, Web-based versus native hacks, etc.) than other developers tackling the mobile IP challenge.

We’ll delve into these paths — and the whys and why-nots of each — in this space in the coming days.

Some folks are still reporting problems when registering.We’re quite certain, though, that checking the list below and correctly pre-configuring your iPhone will make the registration painless.

Make sure your iPhone is not in “Airplane Mode” - Click on “Settings” and set “Airplane Mode” to “OFF”;

If you intend to use a Wi-Fi data connection, make sure WiFi is on - In order to work (both when registering and dialing), your iPhone will need to make a data connection to the RingFree servers. Wi-Fi, though not always available, of course, is your best choice. Click on “Settings” and look to the right of the Wi-Fi  icon. If a Wi-Fi network is listed, you’re all set. Otherwise, click on the Wi-Fi icon, then make sure Wi-Fi is on (it should say so at the top). Click on the “OFF” button to turn Wi-Fi on, then select a network (if one is available) from the list that appears on the iPhone. When connected via Wi-Fi, you’ll see a striped upside-down triangle to the right of your service provider’s name on the upper-left corner of the iPhone. If there is no network available, you’ll have to use the EDGE network.

If there is no Wi-Fi where you are, make sure EDGE is on -   Whether the EDGE data network is available to you is more dependent on your mobile network provider than anything (though EDGE will be forced off if you are in the “Airplane Mode” described above). Look on the upper left of your iPhone, if you are not on Wi-Fi, you should see a capital “E” to the right of your service provider’s name on the upper-left corner of you iPhone. If, instead you see an upside down striped triangle, you’re using Wi-Fi (this should work). If you don’t seen either a triangle or a capital “E”, then you have no data connection and won’t be able to proceed. If this is the case, find a Wi-Fi network to latch onto, or take your iPhone to a location where the EDGE network is available.

Make sure you have a cellular signal -  Both to register and use RingFree, you’ll be making a regular mobile phone call. This means you’ll need a cell signal. On the upper left hand corner of the iPhone you should see an upwards and rightwards sloping set of bars. If you don’t see this, you’ll need to get to a location with a cell signal.

Make sure Caller-ID is set to “ON” - We use the caller-ID information sent by your iPhone to validate your account and make sure the telephone is authorized to use your account.  This means caller-ID must be set to “ON” to register and use RingFree. To make sure, go to “Settings”, click “Phone”, In the “Calls” section, click “Call Waiting”, and make sure it is set to “ON”.

Make sure Mobile Safari has JavaScript enabled - RingFree uses JavaScript extensively both in registration and in the dialer. If JavaScript is disabled, registration will ail. Go to “Settings”, click “Safari”, and, in the “Security” section, set “JavaScript” to “ON”.

Make sure Mobile Safari is set to “Accept Cookies” -  For RingFree to work, you must allow cookies to be placed on your telephone so that the server can track current session information. Go to “Settings” and click “Safari”. Set “Accept Cookies” to either “From Visited” or “Always” (for security purposes, we recommend the “From Visited” setting).

If you tried to register with RingFree and the process did not complete, you may try again after checking all of the above.

When we started working on RingFree, we knew we wanted the first release of our product to work with PhoneGnome. So we contacted David Beckemeyer, told him of our plans, and he opened up development hooks into PhoneGnome that allowed us to seamlessly integrate the two.

We were, understandably, quite happy with the result. And so was David, who asked to license the RingFree interface for use with PhoneGnome.

The result is that RingFree’s initial release supports PhoneGnome right off the bat; and now PhoneGnome is using our interface to provide the iPhone service directly.

If you’re a PhoneGnome user and want to use the service on the iPhone, you now have two choices: use RingFree’s web app at https://rf.com, or use PhoneGnome’s web app at http://m.phonegnome.com/iphone. The two look a bit different, but when using PhoneGnome, the functionalities are identical.

Expect similar licensing arrangements with other great VoIP services in the near future.

Many times, without realizing, we stop ourselves from making a call simply because we believe we cannot reach the network we wish to use. Our company has standards based SIP telephones and users, however I must still have a legacy n-digits number to reach my colleagues from my mobile. This should change and we at RingFree are bringing this change to you today.

This problem of “I cannot really try to call from here” occurs most frequently on mobile networks. Many have already realized the value of calling standards based internet voice networks from mobile handsets. I have read about several recent large investments into companies that connect devices to only one popular proprietary internet voice network. Most of the solutions I observe being offered are all focused on adding other network services such as WIFI to the phone, and special software to the phone that will interact with yet another network, one at a time.

Mobile phones liberate callers from specific geographic locations but not from the towers they use to transmit your voice. Other advanced VoIP technologies available today still have us tethered to our broadband connections. These two worlds are creeping together with a very awkward combination of technologies that allow some networks to be reached in certain circumstances.

The iPhone did a great service to telephony in general by not making the telephone user interface (TUI) the main interface for the handset user. RingFree is expanding on that idea by removing the phone’s voice network limitations. Today we are a bridge to those who wish to call a friend on a voice network such as GoogleTalk. Geographically that friend can be anywhere in the world. The iPhone is a device that has respectable Internet capabilities, and we leverage that for our subscribers. With RingFree our subscribers can reach contacts on an internet-based voice network when they are geographically near or far away. The geography and type of connectivity of a mobile phone consumer should not force them to pay terrible fees. We are establishing our service to not only remove these limits, but also to improve our subscribers’ call experiences with the capabilities of their advanced handsets. Please stay tuned to our efforts. There is definitely more to come.

That we need to generate revenues for RF to survive goes without saying. Hardware and bandwidth costs alone are large and continue to grow as we continue to gain new users. To expand to countries outside the US, initially the European countries where the iPhone has been released, and, soon after, others, will make those costs’ skyward climb more pronounced.

When we started to talk amongst ourselves about  the need for revenues, most of us, accustomed to the trialware method of software distribution of many of our favorite computer programs, had settled on the same idea for RingFree.

So, as was reported by various bloggers, RingFree would be available to users free of charge for 30 days, and $30 a year after.

But then something interesting happened. As more and more of you began using RingFree  to make calls on your iPhone that could not be made on any other platform — to Google Talk and Yahoo! Messenger users, for example — we realized we had something much more powerful in RingFree than a $30 program dial out program.

With RingFree, we could help build a communications bridge connecting users of mobile, traditional telephone, and internet calling networks around the world.

And, the best way to build that network is to offer it at no cost its users.

As a web app, RingFree is free and will be free.

We’ll be publicly talking about our plans to generate revenues in these pages shortly (yes, our friend Dameon is on the right track).

But you can now feel free to use RingFree and install your services on it today, and you won’t be asked to pay for it tomorrow.

We’ve added Recent call and Favorites list “Click-to-Call” functionality, revised and beefed up the dialer pulldown menus, fixed some tricky URL encoding problems when making calls, and tightened up the registration process to reduce the number of time-out related issues you have reported.

Try things out and let us know what you think at http://forum.rf.com.

Following is a complete list of changes:

Favorites/Recents

• Click-to-Call dialing from the Favorites menu is now enabled;
• Click-to-Call recent calls is now enabled. A user can now click on the body of a recent call listing to immediately place a call to the recent destination using the service/pbx previously used;
• A user can now click on a “star” icon to the right of a recent call listing to add that destination and calling service to the user’s list of favorites. The user will be asked to provide a name to appear in the Favorites menu for the added listing;
• A user can now manually  enter a listing into the Favorites menu. User must input a name (as it will appear on the menu), a destination number or IP calling address, and the calling service to be used;
• If an Internet call was placed with the cellular carrier (i.e.: AT&T) selected in the calling services pulldown, it would be saved in recent calls as having been made by the cellular provider, and not via the Internet. This has been fixed;
• Recent calls now show the favorite name if the call destination is included in the Favorites list.

Main Dialer Service Pulldown Menu

• The service pulldown menu on the main dialer has been reorganized into two sections: Calling services/carriers/PBXes listed on top, and some popular Internet and IP calling destinations listed on the bottom;
• When choosing Google Talk, MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger form the calling services pulldown menu, the destination call does not need a suffix. Thus, when calling “MyPal@gmail.com”, if “Google Talk” is selected in the pull down menu, only “MyPal” needs to be entered in order to dial;
• There is a new item in the calling services pulldown menu called “Internet”. When selected, an attempt will be made to route any call placed through the RF server, with no need to use a third party calling server or PBX. If such a call cannot be routed through the RF server (i.e.: a call to a PSTN telephone number, or a call to a non-supported service) the call will fail. SIP URI calls, FWD calls, and calls to supported Voice over IM services (Google Talk, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, etc.) will route directly over the RF server;
• A bug that allowed a user to set the default Call Settings to blank, generating a dial error, has been squashed.

Dialer

• A call to a telephone number prefixed with a plus (”+”) sign would not complete. This has been fixed. All dial strings are now URL encoded to avoid such errors;
• The RF POP number that appeared when making a call through the RF dialer did not include a plus (”+”) sign or country code, making it impossible for non-US users to even try ringFree while it is limited to US POPS. This has been fixed.

Registration

• Entering a back key, manually changing the URL, and other activities during the registration process on the iPhone was breaking the registration so that an account was only partially created. We’ve added catches for these conditions;
• If iPhone caller ID information was spoofed, a caller could have used the phone activation process to impersonate a user account. Re-activating an existing user account now prompts for a login after the phone activation process completes. To keep the database size down, Activation Codes are now deleted from the database immediately after the user account is matched to the caller ID.

Now, none of you have been charged because we haven’t even entered the trial stage. In other words, the 30-day trial has not yet kicked off for those of you have signed up with us, and we haven’t even presented a payment method on our pages.

But over the past week or so that we’ve been in live beta, we’ve gathered enough information to make it possible for us to have a pricing policy that reflects our operational expenses and other potential revenue sources.

That means our pricing will change. Come back and read about it here on Monday, January 28. We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised . . . very pleasantly.

The answer so far has been mostly “Yes”.

Most of you have been able to register with RingFree and able to make phone calls in less than minute. And you’ve told us you really like the process for its simplicity (you also told us we need to shorten some of the explanatory text because you’re not in in the fifth grade — and we will).

But some of you ran into problems. Somewhere in the middle of the process — usually right after phone activation — the registration abruptly ended, and you were left in RingFree limbo: partially registered with no where to go.

When we did come across a solution, we slapped our foreheads because it took so long to figure out the obvious: Those registering with us over WiFi had few problems. But those of you trying to sign-up over AT&T’s EDGE network ran into time-outs and blue-box warnings that killed the process.

The issue is that the iPhone is not able to maintain both a data connection over EDGE and a call connection over GSM concurrently (WiFi and GSM concurrently are OK). So, when you went into the  activation phone call to enter your 4-digit key, you lost data connection with our server and the process would time out. The result: Your iPhone would be activated but you were never registered.

We thought — fingers crossed — we got a handle on the problem. And we deployed javascript modifications that accommodate the momentary loss of data connectivity using EDGE.  Still, some of you, as of early this morning, can’t fully register.

We finally realized that enough of you have been accessing our servers using EDGE that AT&T is caching our data. And until those caches clear and AT&T has our latest javascript in its memory banks,  there’s not much we can do except to ask you who are still facing registration problems to either wait a bit, or to head on down to your local espresso parlor with WiFi and sing up with us there. You’ll be up an running in no time.

P.S.: Using EDGE to make calls through RingFree does not face the same kinds of issues.