fringsters beware of crime in South Africa

As mentioned before on the fring blog, when traveling to South Africa, keep your valuables close at all times or be prepared to “loose” them

A recent Zoopy.com video shows just how brazen criminals in South Africa are becoming.

The moral of the story, when in South Africa, don’t leave valuable things unattended for even a few seconds.

The Nokia E75 lands in South Africa

The ever sexy Nokia E75 has just landed in South Africa and is now available on all networks.

The handset “sports a 3.2 megapixel camera, 2.5 inch QVGA display, Nokia maps and GPS assistance, 50MB of internal memory and a 4GB MicroSD with support for up to 16GB.”

What makes this news even better is that the Nokia E75 officially supports fring.

So if Nokia smartphones are your forte, why not make the upgrade to this sexy fringing device today

The history making twitter baby of South Africa

For those who might have missed the news. A Cape Town blogger (Tertia Loebenberg Albertyn) has made history by becoming the first person to tweet right through the birth of her son. What makes this even more special is that the tag #maxday made the list of trending topics on twitter.

Congrats to Tertia a job well done, we hope your new little bundle of joy is bringing you much happiness.

Around The World For Free - The fringing extract

Starting in New York City on September 18th 2007, Alex Boylan and Zsolt Luka started on the journey of a lifetime.

“Covering 159 days, 16 countries, 4 continents, and 45,000 miles, Around the World For Free follows Alex’s trek from New York City to the untouched lands of Dominica. From a deportation in India right into a war zone in Kenya, from the scorching deserts of Chile to the destitute poverty of Cambodia and beyond.”

During this amazing journey Alex and Zsolt made hundreds of new friends, saw amazing places and got to play with some exciting new technology.

After a stop over in South Africa the guys implemented the then newly launched fringME! widget onto their website. A Nokia N95 was provided by fring and away they went. Although life on the road was fast and furious and mobile internet connections somewhat slow and sometimes outright junk, the guys did not despair and made the regular effort to keep trying despite some difficulties they ran into, this early stage beta testing helped fring pave the way for revolutions in future technologies and for this the fring team would like to thank them.

Around the World for free has now been compiled into an 11hour TV series and is currently airing on WGN America. We just received an exclusive fringy extract from episode 6 entitled ‘South African Kaleidoscope’ The full version of episode 6 will air on Monday evening 18/5/2009 at 9EST/9PST on WGN America.

The guys have also recently taken social media to the next level by implemented a live twitter feed during the show. During each episode of Around the world for free, followers of the twitter group can now interact with both Alex and Zsolt and get exclusive behind the scenes info during the show.

fringsters follow @atwff to show your support.

Making of the Nokia N97 - How it came about

Watch the story behind the making of the Nokia N97. It’s a fascinating one that gives a real insight of what goes into to forging a flagship device from scratch.

Sooner or later another fringing device for us

Mobile Advertising 2009

“IIR’s Mobile Advertising 2009 is the premier event for thought leaders and decision makers in the mobile marketing and advertising industry. The event - which this year takes place in Amsterdam from 12-14 May - will bring together advertising agencies, media planners and the mobile value chain to drive growth and revenues from this nascent market.”

Boaz Zilberman, Chief Architect and co-founder at fring will be on day 2 of the event to discuss the topic of“Overcoming the challenges of delivering successful creative mobile campaigns”

We look forward to seeing you in Amsterdam 12-14 May.

For more information or to book your spot follow this link.

If you’d like to meet up at the event, please drop us a line here.

The fring team

FNB connect - brings dail in numbers to fring

Hey guys, here is some breaking news I personally think may be very exciting for fringsters across South Africa. First National Bank has just launched a shiny new and exciting service called FNB Connect.

FNB is, as far as I am aware, the first VoIP provider in South Africa to let users make and receive calls via VoIP at local South African rates. What this means is that using FNB Connect you can now, not only make cheap local calls, you can now also receive them using your very own 087 number.

The local calling rates are very good:

What makes this service even cooler is the fact that you can use the FNB Connect service via fring. All you would need to do is add your FNB Connect details to the SIP connection settings inside of fring and away you go. Cheap local calls within South Africa using the 3G or WiFi connection on your fring handset.

Ok so whats the catch? This sounds to good to be true?

Firstly you would need a FNB bank account to make use of this service. The entire service is managed by linking your telephone to your bank account, this makes it easy to purchase additional airtime and up to 4 additional 087 numbers for the rest of your family. The second thing is that there is a once-off account activation fee of R49.00, this fee includes calls to the value of R49.00 and your very own 087 number.

I have had the priviledge of testing the service for the last week and I think it’s well worth the jump.