Today, I’ve got my new free testing modem from Bell. I still don’t get the catch for this business: they shipped me a new modem to use their service for free for 2 months. At least, this is what they say.

There was a sale agent in my building trying to sell or offer (??) Bell Internet connections. I told him I already have an ISP and I won’t change it. Not that is the best possible, but I have other reasons. I don’t need other net connection, I won’t keep it, I won’t be their customer. And still he insisted to get this free modem and try it for 2 months. It was easier just to accept this free gift than to argue.

My question regards this business model. What can it bring to the company, in this case Bell? Really don’t know, because as I said, I won’t keept this modem, even if works fine. They spent money with the modem and cables, money for shipping it and surely other costs, including free net connection, which is not quite free for them. What they get? Nothing. For sure.

Maybe there is somebody to explain to me this business model and what’s the catch.

Interesting article in The Globe And Mail: Phony jobs websites closed:

“Toronto — Canada’s Competition Bureau says it has shut down two Edmonton-based websites that duped job seekers around the world with promises of lucrative salaries, but oilcareer.com is already back online and open for business.

[…] 

It took five years of complaints from Internet users and persistent work by anti-scam websites to convince the agency to act.”

Five years to act? That’s canadian.

TorontoPublicLibrary.ca is a nice website with useful online services, except one: room rentals. It works like this:

- Open the page and get PDF;
- Print them and fill manually;
- Then send them by fax.

Technology is working and there are online services, just that only to get the forms. Big deal. I’d like to see here a full online application, no fax application.

We do : Painting, Tiles, Basement Finishing, Renovations …

Call (416) 399-4714

Did he bet on professional sports or not? He is denying, again and again, but as I said in subject, I believe him. After reading what was said (and known) about this case I don’t think he bet. That’s my feeling.

In fact, there are not so many blogging communities in Toronto. Many bloggers just use different solutions, not grouped geographically.

One known website is http://www.gtabloggers.com/ . There are not so many posts, but still have a good list of links to other Toronto bloggers.

Other blog site is http://www.blogto.com/ . This is more updated but is the design I don’t like, especially that white on light grey, almost invisible.

However, if you have a weblog and is somehow related to Toronto don’t forget to advertise it for free in our web directory with a special section for weblogs:
http://www.Toronto1.biz/directory.php?cat=296

Do you know other Toronto blogging communities? Please let me know.

I want to invite you to a few years old Canadian discussion forum at forums.AdvanCode.com . If you are interested in canadian politics, history, art, sports and many other topics you are welcome. We are looking for new members although firsts posts are moderated to eliminate spam. Try it and you may like it.

Of course I knew about WordPress as a free & largely used solution for weblog software, but it’s first time I’m really using. I used mostly Blogger and other solutions. Finally I come to this solution, plus customize it to match our design on this website.

One first conclusion is that I don’t like it very much. Problem is this HTML editor (tinyMCE) which is slow and awkward. I tried 5 timed to delete a paragraph from last post and didn’t want to show it as I wanted. Plus, HTML core editor is a separate window, I don’t like. I’d prefer to have it here, in one place (toggle to HTML WYSIWYG and HTML code, and vice-versa).

However, we won’t change it for a while. This new weblog system is set up to allow user registration and user posting. So, feel free to register and blog here, about what you think is ok on this Toronto portal. If is not appropriate will be simply removed .

Yesterday, I found out that my ISP (cable guys: Rogers) blocked access on port 25 (SMTP) to any other mail servers than its own. Everything else works fine including POP3 (110) port to receive emails or web surfing.

I contacted their customer support twice and it was the same story: the only way to do it is to use their SMTP server. I tried to explain them that is important for me to have emails sent by my email servers with no luck. Then, I searched on the Internet to find out how widespread is this policy, and I found many others complaining about it, especially from big ISP companies.

Why this rule was applied only now? Don’t know. Why there are no exceptions? Don’t know. They simply blocked an Internet port and that’s it.

Of course there are workarounds. One is to use GMail which offers POP3/SMTP access, on non-standard ports:

GMail offers POP/SMTP access to its email. Here are the settings:

POP server: pop.gmail.com.
Port: 995.
Require SSL: Yes.
User name: your Gmail email address.
Make sure your user name includes both your Gmail account name and “@gmail.com”. If your Gmail account name is “qwertz.qwertz”, for example, type “qwertz.qwertz@gmail.com” as the user name.
Password: your Gmail password.

SMTP server: smtp.gmail.com.
Port: 465.
Require SSL/STARTTLS: Yes.
Require SMTP authentication: Yes.
User name: your Gmail email address.
Password: your Gmail password.
( http://www.iopus.com/guides/bestpopsmtp.htm ) 

Other solution is simply to use other port than 25. Many hosting companies already implemented in cPanel an alternative solution openning usually port 26. If you have CPanel/WHM + EXIM see Service Manager -> exim on another port. If this policy will continue we’ll see email sending on all ports available.What’s the use of blocking port 25? All spammers could easily send emails on another port and this stupid rule only block decent, non-technical people. Looks more than an administrative solution to group (and maybe scan & analyse) all emails sent, from a single place. If this is only one small step to control user access to the Internet what would be next? Mandatory HTTP proxies (port 80) to control web surfing?

Welcome to Toronto1.biz weblogs powered by WordPress. This is your first post in newly created section for bloggers. All you have to do is to register a free account and start posting, anything you want related to Toronto and Torontonians.