Nokia last night introduced the shiny new Nokia 5530 Xpress Music handset to the South African market at an exclusive event hosted in the Holiday Inn, Sandton. After the event everyone in attendance was issued with a review handset to use for a period of 12 months. Wow thanx Nokia

The shiny new Nokia 5530 Xpress Music is a low cost device and supports the same applications as the Nokia 5800 and N97. Most applications can be easily downloaded via the Nokia Ovi Store. I thought it may be good to do a post showing the applications I have personally found to be the most useful on my review handset, the sexy new Nokia 5530 Xpress music.

Please note that my list of top 10 must have apps for the 5530 includes both free and premium services.

1. fring – Lets you talk, chat and interact freely between: Skype, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Twitter, Facebook, GoogleTalk, AIM, SIP, Gmail Notifier, LastFM, Orkut and Yandex
2. JoikuSpot – Turns your mobile handset into a secure WLAN (Wi-Fi) HotSpot.
3. Gmail – Google’s free email service – this is the best email service on earth.
4. Google Maps – Possibly the best free mobile mapping software available.
5. Shazam - Amazingly powerful music search application
6. BrightLight - Turns your handset into a handy torch.
7. Accuweather – The best weather application on the 5530. It’s also in the download menu on handset.
8. Best Screensnap – A cool application for taking screenshots. In the download menu on handset.
9. Qik - A cool live video streaming service.
10. Digia Web Browser – The best touch screen web browser available.

This is my current Top 10 and when more applications become available the list will change

fringsters as you may have seen in our last post, Nokia last night announced that ‘Comes with Music‘, “a pioneering digital entertainment service, is now available in South Africa. The service, offers consumers a year of unlimited access to the entire Nokia Music Store catalogue.

Comes With Music devices enable the consumer to download an unlimited number of the over 5-million digital tracks available on the South African Nokia Music Store http://music.nokia.co.za for a one year period. In addition, the consumer is able to keep all their downloaded music from the diverse catalogue of international and local artists - even when the service period of one year is over – on both their Comes With Music device and dedicated PC.

Comes with Music will be available exclusively across a range of Nokia devices through MTN, Cell C, Nashua Mobile and Autopage cellular. Devices include the Nokia 5130 XpressMusic Comes with Music edition – exclusive to MTN, the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic and the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic available across all four channels.”

Comes With Music is a great new service, the only question I have is when will we see Comes With Fring

If you happen to have any one of these great new Nokia handsets be sure to download fring here.

fringsters put your hands together for the one and only Nokia 5530 Xpress Music.

This sleek and sexy Nokia handset is now officially available in South Africa and we are excited to announce that fring already lets you take your friends mobile with this great new Nokia device.

Although “Nokia might have been late to the touchscreen game,” it sure is “making up for lost time now by following up the successful 5800 XpressMusic and N97 with the budget 5530 XpressMusic.”

Most of the western world is abuzz after Apple recently introduced the Apple iPhone 3Gs. Here in Africa though things are different. Most of us cannot afford the high tech gadgetry on offer from Apple. I mean lets face it, most people here in Africa are just looking for something cool yet low cost which will do the job and boy oh boy does the Nokia 5530 do just that.

Nokia last night together with the launch of the Nokia 5530 and 5630 Xpress Music also launched “Comes with music.” “The service, which offers consumers a year of unlimited access to the entire Nokia Music Store catalogue, is now available in South Africa. Comes With Music devices enable the consumer to download an unlimited number of the over 5-million digital tracks available on the South African Nokia Music Store http://music.nokia.co.za for a one year period. In addition, the consumer is able to keep all their downloaded music from the diverse catalogue of international and local artists - even when the service period of one year is over – on both their Comes With Music device and dedicated PC.”

This is why in my humble opinion, companies like Nokia will always have market share in Africa. They are making sure that people of all walks of life are able to groove to the beat on a sexy touch screen device. Thank you Nokia

fringsters if you happen to be one of the lucky few who already has your hands on the Nokia 5530 what are you waiting for download fring today. If you are still thinking of upgrading to a new device, think no more, head over to your nearest cellphone dealer and grab yourself one of these beauties while stocks last.

Note: I will review the Nokia 5530 more closely in the coming weeks.

If pictures speak louder than words then twitter is a bit soft and dailybooth.com is speaking load and clear! This great new startup is already making huge waves in the social space and that after only a few months.

Dailybooth which started back in January 2009 already has well over 3million unique users and is growing at about “35% per month” according to Techcrunch.

Dailybooth founder Jon Wheatley had this to say on the Dailybooth blog: “The idea for dailybooth was coined a few days after I was laid off from a job I had at a web development company in Edinburgh. Everything happened quite quickly so I was frantically brainstorming some startup ideas that could potentially bring in some much needed money. DailyBooth (as it wasn’t yet known) was one of a list of ideas that was churned out in that brainstorming session.”

Well Jon, as they say, neccecity is the mother of invention and I must say, you seem to have struck a gold mine. fringsters mark my words, dailybooth.com is the next BIG thing to steam role over the internet, so go check it out and let me know what you think.

Hi,

You probably know this YouTube hoax from a few months ago where four guys are making popcorn using their cellphones. We thought we should try doing the same thing with fring and see what happens.

Here’s the results:

[Note: Please do not try this at home!]

fringsters the long wait is finally over for streetview fans in Taiwan, Portugal, and Switzerland. Thats right boys and girls Google streetview finally supports your countries.

For those of us here in Africa though the wait is far from over, however the good news is that Google is busy mapping roads in South Africa, so hopefully we will be streetview friendly before 2010.

Google also today introduced a new street view trike to explore pedestrian-focused areas. The new Google trike is perfect for those hard to reach locations, a recently launched sample of the trike in action is the all new streetview of Lego Land California.

Finaly for those who have been yerning for years to have the Google street view crew visit your area, Google has just launched their Streetview Partner Program, “Now, any organization or business can apply to have their property featured in Street View.” The most recent partner locations are: Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, Thunderhill Raceway Park, and San Diego State University.

View Larger Map

“If you happen to work at a location that you think would be a great fit for the Partner Program, be sure to click here to find out more about how you too can be featured in Street View.”

During the 2nd quarter of what has probably been the worst year for global economies it is good to see that smartphones sales world wide are still booming with over 41 million handsets shipped. This is but a small number when you think that during the same time 228 million regular ‘junky’ handsets were shipped world wide.

During this quarter Apple reportedly sold 5.2 Million iPhone handsets, while Nokia reported sales of 5 million E71 and 6.8 million 5800 Xpress Music handsets, RIM sold around 8 million BlackBerries.

It’s going to be interesting to see how the fring family grows in the next few months as more and more people start to investigate the cool features of their newly aquaired smartphone handsets. We look forward to welcoming the 41 million new Smartphone users world wide to the fring family