The Olympics were awesome! We watched, yelled, cheered and marveled at the feats of our favorite athletes. For one second before we get back to work, let’s briefly reflect on the journey…

Athletes work for years, day in and day out, to become experts at their chosen craft. They run, jump, exercise, train vigorously to become one of the best- and then they go out and prove their greatness against the best the world has to offer. When they cross that finish line and realize all their hard work paid off, their smiles and tears of jubilation say it all. Additionally, the knowledge that millions of their countrymen back home are celebrating makes victory even sweeter.

courtesy of http://bit.ly/MtNDHN

A few weeks ago foxnews.com named fring one of the 30 best apps for the iPhone. There are over half a million apps available- and we were chosen as one of the best! This is a wonderful recognition of the thousands of man-hours our team of experts has spent- day in, day out- creating an app for everyone’s use.

Being among the best is gratifying. Even more important is the constant positive feedback we receive from fans, like this comment posted on Facebook:

“No one of my friends knew about fring here in Denmark before. I introduced them to fring and even helped them to download via mobile. The second thing I did is I went to Tanzania this year and helped all my sisters and brothers to download fring on their mobile. Now we are communicating using fring via mobile. Fring is amazing for me….. “

Awards are nice. Knowing that our fans are home using our app and cheering for us- priceless!

P.S. For a bit of nostalgia, here’s our blog post from the 2008 Beijing Olympics!

Thanks to @HaleighOrr for a great fring game – recommended

For anyone who missed it on twitter last week, Haleigh was on a fring video chat with her friends and the four of them got together and made a box! (Either that or they’re calling someone in the chat a loser )

Looks fun and I thought: Why didn’t I think of that?! I fring with friends all the time- that would be a fun game to play: see how many shapes or designs we could make!

Remember the walkman? Suddenly music was portable and runners around the globe rejoiced. When the iPhone first debuted, touch screen! I bet when they invented fire, every caveperson slapped their forehead and thought, Why didn’t I come up with that?!

At fring, we’re always working on new ways to enhance our user’s experience. Some come from our team but a lot of ideas come from feedback we receive from you! You use email and social media to tell us how much you enjoy using fring- but also share with us ways to improve the current version or suggest add-ons for upcoming releases.

So – Thank you, we’re listening… and keep sharing your ideas, improvements and games

As we posted on Facebook last week, we’re hard at work cookin up some fantastic new features for our users, features which will have you slapping your forehead… Stay tuned…

P.S. When I saw the pic above, I wanted to know how they took the picture. Here’s the answer from Tom, one of our resident techies:

On the iPhone/iPad/iPod you press the power button and the home button together until you hear a sound effect of a shutter.
On Android (ICS) you press the power button and the volume button together.

On Sunday we asked our Facebook fringsters what’s the first thing they check on their phones in the morning:
- Email
- Calendar
- Text messages
- News
- Social media

Over half responded email. It would seem that we’re always attached to email. We check first thing in the morning to see if we missed something important, we constantly peek in during the day to answer work emails and yes- before we go to bed, we check one last time just to make sure we didn’t miss anything. All day long- check, respond, delete.

Because of the proliferation of smartphones, we check email no matter where we are- even vacations are interrupted. “Just a sec- I wanna check email quickly.” One hour later…

We behave pretty much the same when it comes to Facebook and Twitter. We check in the morning to see what our FB friends were up to the night before, we scan Twitter for the latest fring updates. During the day, we’re busy reading, Liking, clicking, sharing, commenting and retweeting. We try to be uber-connected to friends, family, work partners and the world.

Which is what makes email and social media so great- yes, we spend a lot of time trying to stay connected to people en-masse. We call (or in our case, video call) our favorite people, but for all our “Friends” and “Fans,” the modern day ‘reach out and touch someone’ needs at least a CC, BCC function, or when we’re less concerned with who actually hears our message, a megaphone to shout out like Facebook and Twitter.

Extra Credit: 69% of Americans will not go to sleep without checking their work email.

Today is National Handhsake Day (yes, there’s a Day for that)!

We all use handshakes as a way to say hello, good-bye, consummate a deal or congratulate someone. Sometimes, a handshake signals to us what type of person we are meeting. As an elderly gentleman told me numerous times, Shake like a man, not like a fish! (in my defense, I didn’t want to hurt him )

Man or fish, no handshake has the intimacy of a hug. We may not know the ROI of a handshake but we do know the ROI of a hug: priceless.

So this Handhsake Day, go ahead and shake the hands of strangers you meet, but remember to give your loved ones a big, warm hug.

If they’re far away, fring can help you with a virtual hug… a video call with your parents or siblings, or a group hug via our group video with up to 4 of your friends abroad…

And if your loves ones don’t have fring, it’s a great excuse to give them a call to their landline or mobile phone with fringOut. There’s no excuses with fring’s almost free fringOut calls.

So this weekend, get on the phone, call that special someone and give them a virtual hug!

hey fringsters!

We’re conducting a routine system maintenance today. You may experience connectivity disturbances for a short time but we will be back up and running very shortly.

Thank you for your understanding as we continue to improve our service for you- our valued community.

UPDATE: maintenance check has ended- thank you everyone for your patience. feel free to fring away!

“Say it with music, Beautiful music.” Irving Berlin, 1921

Music is central to everything we do- we sing lullabies to babies, remember theme songs from our fav TV shows, go to concerts with friends, slow dance to that “special” song, tweet out random lyrics from our favorite artists. Heck, some of us hum music at work, drum on the table or dance around playing “air guitar.”

So whether you’re a music enthusiast or a closet air-guitar-in-our-lounge player, today’s a great day - World Music Day. And at fring, our office is rocking!

Some of us are 80s freaks, others are Gaga’s fans, the programmers have an eclectic mix of music permeating throughout fringLand and for some (ok, one in particular J ) a little classical music does the trick. But no matter how diverse our tastes, we all speak the same language: the language of treble & base.

So go ahead and turn up the volume! Find a song you like, share it with friends or family, dance, sing, rock on and get the party started!

Click on this video and celebrate World Music Day with our favorite song! 1, 2, fring, 4…

One of my favorite songs is the camp-song spoof Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah by Allan Sherman. It triggers great childhood memories of camp and the countless hours of fun it really was. Our parents paid a pretty penny for those 8 weeks but just thinking about it puts a smile on our faces.

The song’s title also reminds me: Did you remember to call your mother on Mother’s Day and say Hello? Tell her how much you appreciate her? Hope so… cause if not, you get a chance to redeem yourself this weekend on Father’s Day. And we wanna make sure you call!

To celebrate Fathers Day, we’re giving away $3 calling credit with any fringOut bundle!

It’s easy to redeem your gift! Just go to fringOut inside your fring app. When you buy any bundle from $10 you will get an additional $3 free!

If you don’t yet have fring, download it for free from the iPhone app store, Google Play or Ovi Store. Then add fringOut credit to get your $3 of free calls to any phone or mobile phone, anywhere in the world!

So you can call dad from your mobile just about for free to his home, office or mobile phone. And because we know you can’t always catch dad the first time you try, this offer is going to be available until the day AFTER Fathers day, till Monday 18 June.

After you call, tweet with the hashtag #fringdad, and let us know how it went!

Phone lines are open and fathers across the US, India and Canada are standing by.

So what are you waiting for? Tell dad how much you appreciate him

And to all the dads in the US, India and Canada, Happy Fathers Day!

Hey fringsters- hope you had a great weekend!

We’re always busy adding new features and improving all our service to reflect what you, our valued users, request.

Our new & improved version (5.6.0.11) available today includes:

- Improved fringOut and SIP voice quality
- Several bug fixes
- New & improved dialer for iPhone users
- Local country recognition and local phone calls without country prefix

Go ahead, download now from the App Store and enjoy.

As always, our Support team is available in case you encounter any difficulties - keep the feedback coming!

These improvements are coming soon on Android too – so stay tuned!

Have a great day!
The fring Team

PS Stay tuned to the blog, Facebook or Twitter for a BIG fringOut special offer coming within a few days!

fringdroids, this is for you.

Fresh out of beta, we release a new version with:

• 1 Click transitions between audio and video calls
• Better computability for Samsung Galaxy S II users who upgraded to Android ICS
• More bug fixes, some of them discovered during the beta process

We want to thank our beta testers who participated in the last two Betas we did during the month. We couldn’t have done it without you.

So what are you waiting for ? Here’s the download button, you know what to do:

If you’re experiencing any issues with the new version, don’t hesitate and contact our support team.

The fring Team

iPhone owners, listen up !

We have a new treat for you, a brand new version with lots of improvements and fixes:

• New version is iOS 5.1 compatible
• 1-click transitions from voice to video calls and back
• New call screens
• Bug fixes
• Lots more !

So, head on down to the App-Store and get a fresh copy of the new version today:

fring you later,

The fring Team