LifeinLines: India’s Twitter

LifeinLines is an online space where you can share anything that comes about or happens to you or around you. Apart from the fact that you could use blogs & forums to do so LifeinLines lets you put down those few moments in the most simplest of ways; email, voicemail, video, SMS/MMS, and Gtalk. So now without wasting time you can share your experience via a phone or an internet connection. Even all those moments which you will soon forget from memory loss will be captured and shared with you friends. Go have a try.

Airtel & Vodafone launch the iPhone: Nothing to be happy about though.

Now ideally this should have been good news now that it has finally arrived to India. Especially after all the craze and the hype we Indians have created from the time the first iPhone was launched in the USA. Well not so happy moment; Rs.30,000 & Rs.36,000 for the iPhone 3G 8GB & 16 GB respectively. You see, while the iPhone 3G has a tag line “Twice as Fast & Half the Price” in India its N.A. because here its “Thrice the Price & Half the Speed”. 3G isn’t yet happened to India as yet & as I see its not going to happen till mid next year i.e. keeping in mind that everything goes as planned. So I don’t see the point of paying such a premium just to own the device that touts to provide such an internet experience without the actual setup. No doubt using the iPhone is quite an experience but its too much a price for an experience that doesn’t do justice to the money spent. Both Airtel and Vodafone are providing EMI option for those who seek to buy the handset but don’t have all that much to blow at one go, after an initial deposit of Rs.10,000. I feel both companies are making their money in that first installment itself considering the fact that the phone actually sells for around $200 (Rs. 9,000). It would have been much better we hadn’t seen this phone come to India or even the first version of the iPhone with updated OS to 2.0.0. at a sensible price would make more sense. Think about it this way you, can have three/four iPhone 3Gs from the US for the price you pay for one here. Moreover, it doesn’t have iTunes and the “App Store” doesn’t contain several apps (including fring), for which inorder to install you would have to jailbreak. And I don’t see a why people won’t be inclined to doing so.

A whole bunch of Nokia phones now supported

It’s been a busy week here at the fring HQ. Last week we brought you 2 new fring ready devices and today we’re happy to add 5 more devices to the fring family. The devices are: Nokia N78, 6550, 6210, 6220 and 5320 - all of which are Symbian 9.3 devices.

To get this new version - simply go to the download page, enter your details and click ‘Join’.

Along with these handsets I’d like to bring to your notice support for another two Symbian handsets; Nokia E66 & E71. While the E66 gets fringing the E71 gets a special version. Get firnging on your E71 handset and let us know what you think of it. Feedback is most welcome as always.

To get it, simply go to our download page, choose your handset.

As you can imagine, developing the fring client is not an easy task and I’d like to take a minute to thank all the fring team for working day and night to bring you this new fring client. So: Thank you!

To those of you who are waiting for the Sony Ericsson G900 version, we know you’ve been waiting for some time now, we haven’t forgotten about you. Stay tuned for more updates soon.

The One! from Acer

Earlier announced at Computex 2008; Acer has finally launched their Aspire One. The Aspire One is one of the many “Netbooks” to hit the market. The recent released Asus Eee PC 1000H has already got competition trying to run over it.

The Aspire ONE is a stylish, sleek and a better looking netbook for sure. Its dimensions are more-or-less similar and it features a reduced LCD screen size of just 8.9-inches. The Aspire ONE weighs less than a kilo with its standard 3-cell battery which delivers 3hours of battery life. You can settle for an optional 6-cell battery which doubles the battery life for just Rs.1,200 and around 200 grams of additional weight. The other standard features includes an Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 120GB HDD, and you will soon also have the option of SSD. The ONE comes loaded with Windows XP SP2 or Linux; your choice. While the hardware remains the same the Windows XP version sells for Rs.22,000 and the Linux for Rs.20,000. The Acer ONE has a self designed Linux GUI which makes working simpler.

Considering that the Eee PC 1000H is selling for Rs.31,000 I can see where my recomendation is going. Unless you so desperately need that 10-inch screen I don’t find it all that worth the extra 10 grand.

Here are your color options for the Acer Aspire ONE.

Skyfire Mobile Browser

Skyfire is a mobile browser which looks to challenge Opera & OperaMini’s standings in the mobile browser segment. Skyfire is a freeware and is available for Windows Mobile. They are now have a working beta version for Symbian. You can try it out only if you have a US mobile number. I’m looking forward to seeing the beta available to all. Skyfire promises to bring desktop browsing experience on a mobile phone. With support for ajax and embedded video playback its going to redefine mobile browsing.

Watch the video for a promo of what to expect. Video sourced from SPRXmobile The Blog; thanks Raimo.

fringing Olympic Updates

The Olympics countdown is on, and our dedicated onsite fringsters are ready to bring you the highlights and low down from the Olympics field and village… Day and night, you can receive free, unique updates via fring from our very own fringentators (commentators, correspondents, play-by-players, unruly news distributors, etc) from the Olympics fringAdd-on.

You can choose to receive live, local language fringfeeds from:
• Alexander Rusakov – Gold medal contender this games! This Russian trampoline champion is going to be fringing away when not focusing on the gold medal he is tipped to win!
• Oleg Zaporozhchenko Jr. – The Russian Olympics team coach & international category judge!
• Fei Wen – Malaysian Olympic volunteer and coordinating the onsite fring effort – thanks!!!
• Tania Teoh – Malaysian Olympic volunteer and avid fan of lots of sports including swimming, volleyball, badminton and more!
• Udi Moshel – Israeli sports obsessive… I mean, enthusiast… will be keeping us all updated with sports and social updates across the board from the fields and other online circuits!
• Agus Jose – Our Spanish sports and travel devotee will micro-blog about both with the added insight only a professional psychologist can offer!

All you have to do is to choose the fringAdd-on from our in-client catalog by: restarting fring –> click Options –> settings– > manage add-ons select one or more. Russians will be micro-blogging in Russian (beginning Aug. 13), Malaysians & Israeli in English and Spanish in….. Spanish (beginning Aug. 15). Cool !!!

You can get more info, review miniprofiles (with quite accurate caricatures) of our fringentators and keep tabs on their feeds from our Olympics page.

Let the fringing games begin!

Mobile Number Portability Pushed to 2009

The good news on Mobile Number Portability (MNP) is that DoT has decided to grant MNP license & the bad news is that the launch date of end-2008 for MNP has been postponed to mid-2009. It may not be something that all operators may favor but Mobile handset users throughout the country are waiting for this to happen. It’s been in the news for almost around 2 years now. The MNP service is expected to be launched in the four metros including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. Now with the change in plans they will have to wait till February or March 2009 as DoT plans to start operations 6 months after the licence is granted. The metros will be followed by other circles by August-September of 2009.