one charger to rule them all
We’ve had a few posts about phone power of late. Regardless of how we power our phones, a real problem is the vast range of incompatible phone chargers.
Here’s an interesting article from the USB technology blog, GetUSB. The Chinese government may soon require all cell phone manufacturers to use a common USB standard for phone chargers. Read all about it here.
But does this get to the real problem?
Anyone who has travelled with multiple devices and gadgets knows just what a pain it can be to have pack separate chargers for each one.
My guess is that apple will be the first to offer a fix for that problem, but you will need to have all apple gadgets!
electric jeans and knee generators
The fring main blog recently ran an article about nanogenerators, and using the kinetic energy generated by clothes etc to power mobile phones.
There is more discussion of recent kinetic power patents here.
It may be some time before you can power your fring calls by walking around the block, but there has been some pioneering in this field by the sporting goods industry.
So who knows? Maybe one of these days.
(For another form of human power see this experiment from Simon Fraser University.)
the wind phone
We’ve discussed solar power for mobile phones before, but now there is wind power. Or maybe there will be soon, it’s not commercially available as yet.
If you ask me, boat owners may be the real market for this. For more details see here.
fringsters aren’t geeks
Or so says the voipuser site.
“At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Fring CEO Avi Schechter today revealed some information about the profile of Fring users. Fring is one year old this month, and is now getting 100,000 new signups every month.”
“The user base is strongly male, with over 75% paying their own mobile phone bill. More than 30% have upgraded their data plan having started using Fring. For 36% the motivation for use is mobility and access to social networks while on the move. Many have traded their handset for another model while using Fring, and he categorizes Fring users as “the early majority” rather than simply geeks. “
Avi wasn’t saying that fring is anti-geek, just that most fringsters aren’t geeks. At fring we love geeks.
new fring for sony ericsson
Attention all Sony Ericsson users!We are happy to release a brand new version of the fring client for your devices, packed with the following features
1. file transfer – swap files with any other fringster or PC buddy (currently MSN only, but more to come shortly)
2. chat improvements – you spoke, we listened and using your ideas and suggestions we’ve created new fring chat feature, making the experience even closer to your PC chat sessions - give it a try - you won’t be sorry.
3. fring is now available in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Italian, Russian – what can I say ? You asked for it, we translated it 
BTW: fring will automatically install the default language based on the handset language; you can always go to the More –> settings menu to change language
4. privacy setting – your privacy is important to us! We’ve enhanced your privacy settings (you can now choose to show/hide your signature on PC IM clients as well as control mood message and switch them on/off )
5. fringtons & vibrate: bring on the tunes. Want to change fringtones ? Go to our fringtones page to check out and download free ringtones to your handset (or simply choose one already loaded into the music library on your device)
Keep on fringing!
tuf talk on iPhone
Edward Tufte is one of the gurus of the increasingly important field of application and data design. It’s fascinating to listen to how design experts analyse the various physical and virtual products we use. Even if there is not much you can do about what they say immediately, they get you thinking. You can hear and see Edward Tufte review the iPhone online here via this relatively large video download.
…Or you can see the same thing in a lower quality format via Youtube here.
If your bandwidth can handle the better quality non-Youtube presentation, my recommendation is to use it.
sip for beginners…
This video gives you the basics on SIP. But it doesn’t tell you that you can run SIP from fring.
This video tells you how to run SIP from fring.
If you want to learn a lot more about SIP, the wikipedia entry on SIP is very throrough.
small is the new big
In the New York Times technology news section (”Bits”) they recently ran a report
“Twitter, Firefox and Big Ideas That Are Small Companies” that focuses on the companies behind Twitter and Firefox rather than focusing on the applications themselves. Their conclusion?
“…we should understand that for many ideas enabled by the Internet, small is the new big.”
much to do about to dos
(Image from Flickr used with permission of Amit Gupta)
The Microsoft Presspass site reports “Survey Shows Increasing Worldwide Reliance on To-Do Lists” .
The report discusses how people in different countries use their “to do” lists. And mobile phones are becoming an increasingly important part of people’s personal task tracking.
The Microsoft site also lists some tips for using smartphones to manage your “to dos” here.
We discussed a way you could use fring’s twitter interface to give you access to “I want Sandy” as part of a combined phone / web / e-mail personal task tracking application on this blog back in December.
Interestingly enough, one of the major web based “to do” applications, “Remember The Milk”, brainchild of a Sydney based team , now offer G-mail integration and Twitter integration.
Remember, Twitter-ability means fring-ability. So you can now “Remember The Milk” with fring.
