Your Key

If you’re reluctant to proceed, that’s understandable. Using the Phone Validation page is not for the faint of heart.

Telephone number validation uses a third-party service to analyze a telephone number and return information about it, including whether the telephone number is valid. The third-party service tracks the number of times that a particular user verifies a number, with different rates for different levels of usage. Most of us would not be verifying more than 100 numbers in a month, so the service is free ‑ except when a lot of people are involved, the total number of validations may exceed the limit. To avoid this situation, each person who wishes to use the Trinidad Way website for telephone validation must obtain their own key.

This is a two-step process. Step 1 is to create an account with a company that acts as marketing for several hundred of these third-party services. There is no charge to create this account ‑ the marketing company makes their money by taking a cut from paid subscriptions. The recommended source is here. Click the link, then click the “Signup” button in the upper-right corner. If you happen to have an email account at google.com, you can click “Sign up with Google” to use your google.com information with APILayer. Otherwise, you will need to fill in your name and email address, create a password (don’t forget to make a note of it), identify your country of origin and state, verify you are not a robot, click the first check box, then click the “Sign Up for Free” button. You will shortly receive an email asking you to verify your email address (check your Spam folder if necessary). Click the link in the email to verify, and you now have an account.

Step 2 is to obtain a personal key. Click the same link, log in if necessary, then click the “Subscribe” button below the Free Plan on the far left. You will receive a rather long and convoluted code. Make a note of it for future reference.

If you forget your key, return to the above page and login, if necessary, to see your key.

The Phone Number

Telephone numbers can be entered in a variety of formats. Consider the number for the Town Center, which is 513-0045 in it’s most common form. When you dial the number, though, you will dial just the digits 5130045 ‑ which is another common form. Without an area code, though, either number is ambiguous. The same 7 digits may well refer to a telephone located in Utah. To be more specific, the area code needs to be included. This could be (239) 513-0045, or 239-513-0045, or just the digits you would actually dial, 2395130045. The Validation page is not fussy about punctuation in the number as long as it has at least 10 digits after removing spaces, dashes, and parentheses.

What about the country code, though? (322) 226-4000 might not be complete if the intent was to call a number in Mexico, which requires a prefix of +52. If no country code is supplied, the page will assume that you intended it to be US and will add +1. Otherwise, include the country code. Entering a number of +52 (322) 226-4000 will find a landline in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Entering just (322) 226-4000 will return an invalid number, since there is no (322) area code in the US ‑ although there is one in Toronto, Canada.

Using the page

When you are ready to validate a phone number, enter the long and convoluted code into the “Your Key” field, and the desired telephone number into the “Number” field, then click the “Submit” button. Your results will be displayed below the button. As a side benefit, the site will make note of Your Key and will save it for your personal future use.

The standard page header contains the following functions:

•  opens HELP for a page (if shown).
•  returns from HELP to the original page (if shown).
• accesses the following menus:
  • Trinidad Way groups pages primarily of interest to residents of Trinidad Way, including:
    • Neighbors groups several pages, including the street map and info about CONCUR members.
    • Street Reps lists the curent street reps and how you interact with them.
    • Activities and Photos lists street activities and photo books.
    • Storm Planning provides references to prepare for and deal with a tropical storm.
    • Passwords is a quick way to generate secure passwords. (Trinidad Way will not keep any information about them.)
    • Memes is a fun way to create your own memes.
  • IslandWalk accesses the CONCUR website and a few things about IslandWalk.
  • Newsletters accesses recent weekly and monthly e-blasts from Castle Group, as well as some articles of particular significance.
  • Information groups pages of interest primarily within the Naples area, including:
    • Telephone Numbers displays interesting telephone numbers.
    • Interactive Maps maps interesting places both local and around the hemisphere.
    • News Weather etc. directly access popular categories of mostly‑external sites.
  • More Sites accesses even more categories of local and internet pages in sets for display or visiting.
• restores a scrolled page (such as this one) to the initial view. (For users with no mouse, it also hides the dropdown menu.)
• scrolls a page to the bottom. (For users with no mouse, it also hides the dropdown menu.)

Decisions of the judge are final, but feel free to lobby for another topic to be covered or another page to be referenced from this site.

Explore a bit, and always have fun.