fring nominated for first ever Sony Ericsson content award

fring was today nominated for the Productive Mobility category in the first ever Sony Ericsson Content Awards.
The Awards are designed to recognize the outstanding achievements of existing content development partners.

The 2007 Content Awards will celebrate the achievements of mobile content creators in five focus area’s.

• Product Mobility

• Gaming

• Imaging

• Music & Audio

• Themes & Graphics

After an extensive pre-screening period, Sony Ericsson have now selected 26 outstanding applications and content in 5 different categories. “The winners will be selected by our judges who will base their decisions on the following ranking parameters.”

Ease of use - user experience
Does the application, service or content work as it’s expected to? Is it intuitive and easy to use?

Innovative
Is this just another knock-off, or does it have something original? Is there a high “wow” factor in its user experience, concept or technology?

Look and feel
How are the characters, objects, backgrounds and colors? Is there a full screen support and what’s the quality of the graphics?

Audio performance
When applicable, does the application, service or content take advantage of the sound or music capabilities of the phone?

Entertainment factor
Is it FUN to play and replay?

For more info on the awards visit the official website.

Synthasite gets $5 Million first round funding

“South African Internet startup Synthasite recently announced that it has signed a $5 million investment agreement with Compagnie Financière Richemont’s subsidiary, Swiss-based Columbus Venture Capital.

Synthasite is a free Web 2.0 Publishing Platform that allows users to construct a website without any knowledge of HTML or programming, using drag & drop along with configurable dialog windows. The Company recently launched its AJAX based platform into Beta and has attracted nearly 10,000 users so far. Synthasite also plans to open it’s platform to third party developers next year, in order to allow them to create widgets, templates & other plugins for the platform.

Synthasite will relocate certain functions from Cape Town, South Africa to California, USA in order to be closer to the key players in the Web 2.0 space.” imod.co.za

fringsters, Synthasite is a great new South African start up and is definitely worth supporting. If you plan on creating your own website but fear that you don’t have the necessary skills, give Synthasite a try you won’t be sorry.

Alex Boylan’s “around the world for free” lands in South Africa

Alex Boylan winner of the second season of CBS’s “The Amazing Race.” has arrived in South Africa.

Alex is on a whirl wind trip around the world. But what makes this trip so unique?

Alex will be making the entire journey of about 6 months, with nothing but a few essential items and a smile, the rest of the trip will be funded and managed by viewers of the show that is broadcast weekly on CBS and from his website aroundtheworldforfree.com

This is the worlds first reality show that is being broadcast on a daily base directly from location to viewer and that is directly controlled by the viewer.

But what does this mean for you and me?

It means that we can control Alex’s journey as he moves around the world, telling him where to go, what to do, what to eat and where to sleep.

To date, Alex has traveled through North and South America.
He now plans to take on Africa. Starting from Cape Town on Tuesday the 27th Alex will try to make his way up the East coast to Mozambique and higher into Africa and fringsters this is where he needs you.

If you have any travel tips, can give Alex work for the day or provide transport or accommodation, log onto the website and take control of the show. Send Alex where you want him to go and in the process have a little fun. The website is totally interactive and you can message Alex directly from within the site.

Alex will be passing my neck of the woods in a week or so and I hope to get an in depth interview with him then. We have organized him a few days work at some of our local attractions in the area like Monkeyland and Birds of Eden, and the next few “webisodes” of around the world for free, are going to be fun so don’t miss them.

Its going to be very interesting seeing how long and how far Alex can go solely on the goodwill of others.

fring welcomes Nokia E51

Nokia E51 users world wide will be happy to know that fring now supports the E51. So without further ado, I say:

Download fring to your E51 before there is a queue

Note: Voice quality to Skype has also been vastly improved across all handsets. Download the latest version and hear the difference.

fringME! widgets for you and ME, me, me…

Whether you’re into internet communities, social networking, blogs, auction sites, you name it, life is simply about making online connections. So, we’ve been working hard to find new ways for fring users everywhere to stay connected with their online buddies, whether they’re fringsters or not. fring essentially enables your entire community to reach and find you on your fring-enabled mobile from anywhere on the web.

With this in mind we have developed the all new fringME! widget. This WIDGET lets your entire online community instantly see whether you’re online, offline, or busy in a call and also chat with you, even if they don’t have fring.

Thats right fringsters, your friends can now not only see if you are online, they can also see exactly where you are using GoogleMaps, and contact you, all via our new fringME! widget.

To get yourself a free and easy to use fringME! widget, simply pop onto fring.com and follow the easy instructions.

Don’t delay get your fringME! widget today.

Please note: Privacy settings inside fring on your handset requires you to switch on or switch off the fringME! location feature (you know, like ‘Opt in and out’… perfect for those occasions when you don’t want to be found!)

Also fringME! widget currently only supports Symbian 9.1 & 9.2 versions. You must also install the latest version (V 3.24.9) of fring to enjoy these benefits.

2010 sub cable gets the green light

“It’s all systems go for the R4.3bn submarine telecommunications cable which will link southern and east Africa with India and Europe ahead of the 2010 Soccer World Cup.” News24

Work on this 15000km optic fibre sub sea cable is said to begin this week, and will be completed and fully operational by June 2009.

The cable with a capacity of 1.28 terrabytes per second will bring much needed bandwidth relief to the African continent.
It is hoped that this cable will give the 2010 soccer hosts the international bandwidth to successfully broadcast the world cup.

With more and more bandwidth coming to our continent over the next few years wireless broadband is bound to get cheaper and cheaper and this will lead to many new folks joining the internet revolution, which will also mean that many new people will be able to benefit from frings free calls via mobile.

This can only be good news for fringsters in Africa and we at fring wish the contractors of this new cable the best for the hard few years of construction that lie ahead.

Google’s Mobile Maps is so “WOW”

Mashable.com recently Blogged about Google’s Mobile Maps.
It looked like a cool new mobile application so I though, hey why not download and give it a try.

I pointed my web browser to http://www.google.com/gmm
Followed the download link and within a minute was mobile mapping on what I can say is the greatest mobile mapping application I have ever used.

I was presently surprised at how easy the application downloaded and at what an amazing rate the screen refreshed during satellite imagery mode.

Possibly the best thing is the easy integration with GPS.

So fringsters if like me you dig new toys, pop onto http://www.google.com/gmm get Google’s latest and possibly greatest mobile app and start mapping.

Attached below are a few of the screen shots I took while mapping.

Lucky and Flo sniff out bootleg CDs, and DVDs

Lucky and Flo a pair of black Labrador Retrievers, have become the worlds first animals trained to detect optical discs by scent. “Earlier this month they took part in a series of raids along the German-Czech border that netted 18 000 bootleg CDs, and DVDs hidden in warehouses, car boots and other places.” They have also recently sniffed out about two million pirated films during a bust in Malaysia. News24

Although Lucky and Flo cannot judge between what is legal and what is not, they have been very successful in leading their handler in the right direction, and thus far this operation has been a great success. CNN

With the recent influx of pirated DVD’s in South Africa, it would be interesting to know when Lucky and Flo will be paying our country a visit.

Virgin Mobile introduces Free unlimited SMS’s for all

“Virgin Mobile has launched a new package which allows subscribers to send unlimited SMSs to any network at any time.”

Consumers who wish to qualify for this offer have to subscribe to Virgin Mobile’s “Killer Deal” at a monthly rate of R149. The deal - which includes a SAMSUNG U700 or LG Shine KE970 - ‘gives subscribers R 150 airtime - which can be used at any time between any network.’

So for the second best way to stay connected with friends and family, this December switch to Virgin Mobile and start smsing everyone freely.

Sadly though the handsets that come with this offer do not support fring and Virgin Mobile does not support 3G, so fringsters wishing to fring their family members should rather consider having another handset for texting non fring family members using Virgins great new free SMS deal.

Apple says NO to South African Import

“South Africans can forget about Apple’s iPhone. The distributor of Apple’s products in South Africa has announced that the hugely popular gadget will not be available in South Africa.” News24

South Africans looking to import the iphone by themselves will be forced to have them hacked for them to work on the local networks. Although many iphone hacks are available, Apple warns that these hacks are illegal and will damage the iphones software.

Apple has stated that “Users who make unauthorized modifications to the software on their iPhone violate their iPhone software license agreement and void their warranty.”

This all makes the for very sad reading,

However in real life the situation looks very different.
We found a few local users who have imported iphones, installed the unlocking software and are now happily calling away on their iphones.

fring is currently not supported on Apples iphone because the iphone has no 3G. Is it really worth wasting time and money buying and hacking a handset that clearly does not want your business?