Google Voice SIP calling on Cyanogen Mod

Being poor college student, I am always looking for ways to save money.  My current cell phone plan on Virgin Mobile costs me a whopping $25 and includes 300 minutes, unlimited texts, and "unlimited" data.  All of these used to be fine for me, but since I've moved away from home, I find myself engaging on more voice calls.  In the past I never used all 300 minutes, but in the past two months, I've had to buy more minutes before the end of the month.

While the easy solution would be to jump up to the next highest plan, $45 dollars  a month for more minutes on a mediocre network is hard to stomach.  Therefore,  I investigated using Google Voice over IP for making calls.  It turns out that the setup procedure is not all that difficult, provided you have patience.

I am using an LG Optimus V for this tutorial, with a custom CyanogenMod 7 based ROM.  I will assume for the purpse of this tutorial that you are using a CyanogenMod based ROM with access to SIP settings. (I don't know if stock Android allows access to these settings.)

1. Create a Google voice if you haven't already.  Go to Google.com/voice and sign in with your Gmail account.  You will be asked to pick a number and/or area code.  Pick something memorable is it's available.  Give GV your current phone number and let it forward to that number.  You can disable this  later.
2.   Install Google voice app on your Android phone.  You can find this in the Play store.  Open the GV app and sign in with your Gmail account.  When asked whether you want to use GV for calls, choose "never."  The other options will use your GV number, but still use your cell minutes, which defeats the purpose of GV.
3. Install the app called SIPDroid from the play store.  Once installed, open the app and choose the "create new PBX linked to Google Voice."  You need to fill in the password blank with a password of your choice.  This password will be for your account that SIPDroid will create at pbxes.org.  The username field at the top can be left as is or changed if you prefer.
4. Once SIPDroid finishes setting up your PBXes account, it should display a little green dot up in the status bar.  When you see the green light, enter the settings of SIPDroid and navigate to the settings for the PBX account.  (It should be the top option in the main menu.)  Copy the username and password and paste it into a note application.
5. Open up your Android settings menu.  Go to Call Settings, scroll to the bottom and tap on "Accounts" under the "Internet Call settings" section.  Press the add account, and fill in the fields using the info you copied out of SIPDroid.  The server setting should be pbxes.org .
6. Uninstall SIPDroid.  You no longer need it.  The app just makes it convenient to set up pbxes.org.
7. Press the back button and read the info about the account. You should see some messages about the account connecting.  Check the box to receive incoming calls.  Go back up to the previous menu and touch the setting for "Use internet Calling" ,  and pick "Ask for each call."

 At this point, you return to Google voice settings from a desktop browser and uncheck the forwarding box under settings.  Basically, you don't want Google voice to call you and use your minutes.

• Pick up another phone and call your Google voice number.  Your phone should begin to ring momentarily.  If that works, try placing a call and choose Internet call when prompted.  If both of these worked, Congratulations.  If not, you need to follow my optional steps to get outgoing calls working.

Optional steps to fix outgoing calls:

1. Log in to your Google account from a web browser.  Go to the Account settings menu and choose Security.  Follow the steps to enable two-factor authentication.  
2. After you have enabled two-factor auth, you can now add passwords on a per application basis.  Create a new one-time password for PBXes.org.  The name doesn't matter.
3. Open up a new browser tab and navigate to pbxes.org.  Log in using the username and password you typed into SIPDroid to create the account.
4. Click the button labeled "Trunks" on the left.  Pick the one called Gtalk/youremail.gmail.com.
5. Copy the new one time password from Google and paste it into the password field on the PBXes page.  Keep in mind, you are NOT changing the password or pbxes.org.  You ARE changing the password that pbxes.org has for your Google account.
6. Save the changes and log out of pbxes.org.
7. Try making a call again from your phone using Internet calling.  It should now function as expected instead of saying "The call cannot be completed as dialed."

Additional info:
Call cannot be completed issue
From what I gather, the reason behind the call cannot be completed issue is that pbxes.org cannot handle passwords with special characters.  If your Google account has a password with specials in it,  PBXes cannot log in to your Google account to complete a call.  The one use password made by Google only contains letters, and therefore will function properly in PBXes.

Keep in mind that you will need to have some sort of data service available to use VOIP calling.  If all went well, you will now be able to place free calls to U.S. phone numbers and talk forever.  Please email me with comments or questions or if you need some help with the setup process.

Nexus 7: The perfect size between phone and laptop

There's really not much point in me writing a full review of a tablet that has already been well received by internet news outlets everywhere.  If you want to read some, here are a few links.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/28/nexus-7-review/
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6073/the-google-nexus-7-review

I do however, feel compelled to write about how I use the device day to day.  First of all, I am a college student attending Eastern Washington University.  That should already give some indication of how I use this device.

Here is a list of activities I do with my Nexus 7 in descending order from most often to least often.

1. Alarm clock:  With the Moko case from Amazon, standing the N7 as a clock is super easy
2. Textbook reading:  Buy the E-book versions of your textbooks from Amazon or B&N and sync them to your tablet.
3. Reading the morning emails
4. Casual web browsing when I'm too lazy to whip out my MBP
5. Geocaching:  Download C:geo from Google Play, sign in, cache some maps (you won't have wifi when you're out caching), and enjoy the hunt.

And there you have it.  My top 5 use cases for the Nexus 7 tablet.  Despite having only 8 gigs of storage, I have yet to fill it up.  The wifi only limitation isn't really a deal breaker for me either, since I own an Android smartphone.

Those of you in the market for some sort of small tablet should pick the N7 over the competition, simply because it is the most pure of the Android tablets out there ( including the Kindles and Nooks).

And for the price of $200 direct from Google, it's a bargain considering how much hardware it packs inside.