Deadlines, deadline, deadlines, we all have them and most of us live by them. Today happened to be the deadline for the coolest fringing competition around with more than R14000.00 worth of prizes up for grabs. Today also happened to be the day the Blue Bulls won The Absa Currie Cup at Loftus. It’s not easy winning when you are up against a bunch of ‘Cheetahs’ but in the end the boys in Blue came off victorious and so to be fair to all the Cheetahs out there I have decided to extend the fringing deadline by 12days. Thats right fringsters you now have 12 more days to submit your entries.

Bellow are a few of the entries received to date. You now have 12 more days to let those creative juices flow, snap or edit a picture of fring in Africa and stand in line to win Big with Sony Entertainment Television and fring.

The new deadline is Thursday 12 November 2009 at 12am.

The Winner will be announced on Monday 16 November.

Follow these instructions to stand in line to win big.

1. Snap a picture of yourself or your buddy using fring in any great location in Africa.
2. Email your pictures to us by clicking here.
3. Get all your friends to view and comment on your pic’s over here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fringsa/

Note: When composing the email, please put your Name and Surname in the Subject line of the email and in the body of the email please cut and paste the text below and then just add the relevant details. Country: fring user ID: Add some text about the picture. The image below taken at Dune7 in Namibia, gives you an idea of the kind of content we are looking for.

Terms Apply

fringsters, the Mashable Open Web Awards is the only multilingual international online voting competition that covers major innovations in web technology. Through an online nominating and voting process, the Open Web Awards recognizes and honors the top achievements and offers a unique opportunity for the most accomplished websites and services to receive international recognition for their achievements.

Using the widget below, please cast a vote for your favorite mobile application hint hint that means fring

Nominations close November 15th.

Guys,

We’re really excited to welcome a whole lot of Slovakians to fring today!

Following fring’s recent announcement if its GSMA Mobile Innovation Awards- local tournament win, today we are announcing a neat cooperation with O2 Slovakia, part of the international telecom Giant Telefonica, to offer fring to all its subscribers.

Both recent events signify the telecom industry’s mainstream endorsement of mobile rich-communication technology in general and fring, specifically.

O2 Slovakia is partnering with fring, offering its users social communication capabilities over its networks. We applaud them for embracing the fact that mobile users really want the choice to share their mobile and internet experiences over traditional or mobile internet- channels, from their mobile phones– AKA fring.

Like the rest of you, now O2 Slovakia subscribers will be joining the fring community, which will allow them to chat and interact with other fringsters and their favorite web-based instant messaging and social networks for free, over Wi-Fi or within their O2 internet data package.

The specially localized fring version is now available for download via the O2 Slovakia website.

The full announcement can be found here.

So, without further ado, we welcome our new O2’s Slovakian users to the ever growing global community of fringsters.

vitajte!

The fringTEAM

We’re very excited about AT&T’s announcement today (confirmed by Apple) that its 3G wireless network will be open to third-party Internet voice applications on iPhone.

Until now fring users could only use fring on their iPhone over Wi-Fi, so this comes as great news for us and our iPhone fringsters.

fring’s dev team is hard at work, making sure we will be ready to go once 3G iPhone gates are open . We will be live before you can even say “fring for iPhone over 3G on its way!” with the new feature-packed version we released just today… but also over 3G!

fringTEAM

fring’s latest iPhone & iPod touch version (2.0.0.4) is now available on the App Store, with a new look, more integration between social networks, improved voice and much more!

The new version includes a new user profile, which allows you to update your fring nickname, avatar and mood text, and broadcast it back to your IM friends. You can also see your friends’ avatars and mood texts from other networks – currently on Skype, others coming soon.

You can also now use SkypeOut & SIP to call your friends directly from the fring address book with a much clearer line thanks to our voice team’s big effort to improve voice quality!

If that’s not enough we added- copy/paste & linking capabilities to save you time while chatting away with your friends and speakerphone support for all voice calls.

German users, we got some great news for you too – fring on iPhone/ iPod touch is also now available in your native language!

As you can see, we’ve been busy fringbees – improving features, introducing new capabilities and always staying ahead of the pack to continue being the ultimate social community hub for your iPhone/ iPod touch.

So go get the new version today and as always, feedback is much appreciated!

The fringTEAM

Yesterday I heard a shout… not a scary one, it was a shout of joy.

A little background:

When you work at a startup you face challenges on a daily basis, you step into places that no one has ever been before, you explore new areas, you invent new things, you try to think out of the box, and then you have more challenges and technological barriers to cross.

When you work at a startup you hear a shout once in a while… when you hear the shout of joy you know that another major barrier has been crossed.

Since the launching of fring we heard a few (well remembered) shouts at the office. We had the famous “We have VoIP on Symbian 8″ one and then I remember the one with the iPhone as well (I’m talking months before the SDK was out)

So yesterday we heard another one… it was amazing to see that it actually works, it made us all jump of joy.

What was it all about!? oh, that I can not tell… we still have a long way to go there but I can tell you it’s worth the wait.

It looks like the winter months are going to be hot @ the fring HQ. Stay tuned…

[Picture by Kaptain Kobold]