NBC Crusoe: fring takes you behind the scenes

Your local fring blogger (me) recently took you behind the scenes in the makeup trailer on the set of NBC’s Crusoe.

For this post I thought it would be good to give you a little look at the two main actors. Meet Philip Winchester and Tongayi Chirisa, over the last few weeks I have been privileged to work closely with both Philip and Tongayi, it has been a smashing experience that is just too good not to share.

So without further ado I bring you a rare behind the scenes look on the set of Crusoe.

Images curtsy of pizquita.com and distributed under the creative commons license.

WordcampSA 2008 a fringing huge success

I have just returned from what I can say was one of the best functions I have attended this year.

Tyler Reed and the team from unique successfully pulled off the very first Wordcamp in South Africa and if I didn’t know any better I would say they have been doing it for years. Well done guys, here’s to hoping WordcampSA 2009 will be just as great.

The line up of top class speakers made for a very informative day and during the breaks many great contacts and friends were made and it was good to see how many of the attendees where already benefiting from the total freedom that fring offers. It was also very exciting to hear that some of the local developers were looking at developing add-ons using the fring API.

During the day we heard from these fine speakers:

• Adriaan (Adii) Pienaar
• Vincent Maher
• Justin Hartman
• Matt Mullenweg
• Dave Duarte
• Rafiq Phillips

It was great meeting up with Matt Mullenweg the founding developer of wordpress.com - Sadly his iPhone 3G is not fring supported - Matt we are working on this and lets hope one day soon you can join the fring party!

I thought a few nice pictures would round off this post nicely, but first a big shout out goes to everyone who proudly wore their fring gear during the event, and to Rafiq who even had the fring T on while doing his wooden spoon presentation. Dude you rock - it’s good to see how strongly you support the Jail4Bail campaign, and for what it’s worth we support you

fring blogger live blogging from Wordcamp SA 2008

WOW what a made rush, After a few late night plan changes, I was finally given the green light to attend Wordcamp South Africa 2008 (Thanx Roy) So Packed my bags by 3am on the morning of the 23rd and left from Plettenberg Bay for the 6hour road trip to Cape Town. In 6 hours wordcamp would start and I couldn’t be late.

After what felt like an eternity on the road, we finally arrived in the mother city and made our way to The Wild Fig, a rustic restaurant in the middle of Cape Town. The good news is that the trusty fring mobile pulled its weight and we arrived safely.

When entering I noticed that space would be a problem, as a full house had already gathered.

Lucky I quickly found a seat and set up my laptop only to find out that the great Skyrove WiFi was overloaded (lets hope in a few minutes it will work again) and the Vodacom 3G network wasn’t working great, which means live blogging and twitter will be done with some frustration

So this is where I sit as you read this post, look out for more posts going live soon or video’s on Zoopy.

Worlds first digital underwater goggles

“Hammacher Schlemmer’s Digital Camera Swim Mask integrates an underwater digital camera into a swim mask” This according to Gizmodo.com

The 5-megapixel camera can easily be taken to a depth of 15 feet and can take about 30 pictures in its 16MB memory. The great thing is that the memory can be expanded using a microSD card and will then allow for hundreds of pictures.

The camera supports both stills and video’s and has a inbuilt LED inside the goggles which indicates in which mode your camera is. Coming in at only $99.00 this sure is one of the cheapest non recyclable 5-megapixel underwater cameras around.

Hammacher Schlemmer’s Digital Camera Swim Mask, delivers true underwater freedom for divers and swimmers alike and looks and sounds like a great new techno gadget for fringsters who enjoy the great outdoors. Currently this item is not available in South Africa, but watch this space for progress

New digital camera forces users to recycle

Gizmodo.com is reporting that a new digital camera is now available in Japan that forces users to recycle.

The 3-megapixel digital camera can take about 50 images before it needs to be handed in for development, the pictures are then available on a CD and the camera is shipped back to the manufacturer for recycling.

Now although I cannot fully understand the point of a disposable digital camera, I can see it being hugely popular because it has the ability to take pictures underwater and costing a mere $12.00 in Japan.

There is currently no word on availability in South Africa, however given time I am sure it will arrive at a holiday destination near you.

fring for Symbian 9.3 is now available

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’.

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.

fring for E66 now available

We reckon Nokia’s new E66 is very cool, and in response to popular demand, we’ve just released a version of fring for this great device (that’s another device added to around 1,000 already supported..and more on their way!)

Check it out and as always let us know what you think.

fring team

NBC’s Crusoe: Behind the scenes in the makeup trailer

So as mentioned before, this past week your local fring blogger got the chance of a lifetime, I went behind the scenes on the set of NBC’s Crusoe and even got to get down and dirty on set, playing a no good mutineer.

Playing an extra is no easy work and I soon learned just how long and hard extras have to work for a very small wage. However on the bright side I can report that it’s one of the best experiences that I have had in my short lifetime.

For this post I thought I would give you guys an exclusive behind the scenes sneak peak of the makeup trailer and how they take a perfectly good looking fringster and turn him into a sort of evil looking mutineer

I also attach a picture taken at the end of day another long day of filming. In the picture is your fring blogger (me) and the main actor who plays the role of Crusoe, Philip Winchester. Thanks for posing for a picture Philip, much appreciated

E71 is now fring supported

So you had some time to see what your new and shiny E71 can do. To be honest with you, we think it’s a wonderful handset too. But, don’t you think it’s time to get it fringing and not just ringing?Yup, we think so too, so we’re glad to announce that we’ve just released a brand spanking new version for the E71. To get it, simply go to our download page, choose your handset, get an sms, click on it and you’re ready to go.

As always, we’d love to hear your feedback.

Enjoy,
The fring team

Gmail outage felt in South Africa

Google’s Gmail which servers as an email client for more than 100million people has suddenly stopped working.

According to Techcrunch, the service is down in “multiple countries” and having just tried to access my account locally, I see it’s also down in South Africa.

fringsters subscribing to Gmail notifier via fring, will therefore not be able to receive notifications until Google’s servers are up and running again. I bet the guys over at Google are working around the clock to get this problem sorted and hopefully they will soon have it up and running again.

For more info see the official Gmail blog.

At the time this post went live there was still no official responce via the Gmail Blog.

UPDATE 1. Google’s comment on the outage:

Since about 2 p.m. Pacific Time today, many Gmail users have been unable to access their email. We are very sorry for this interruption in service. The issue is being caused by a temporary outage in the contacts system used by Gmail which is preventing Gmail from loading properly. We are starting to roll out a fix now and hope to have the problem resolved as quickly as possible. Even though you may not be able to get to your inbox right now, your mail is safe, including new incoming messages.

We will post an update in the Gmail Help Center (http://mail.google.com/support/ ) when more information is available.

Thanks to Techcrunch for the breaking news and updates.

UPDATE 2. Google fixes the problem and issues an apology. Don’t worry Google we forgive you