MobilePress: WordPress made easy for iPhone and other Handsets

WordPress, one of the most popular and possibly the “coolest” blogging platform around has just been given a very unique new plugin from a South African company who’s name says it all. The hard working guys over at Younique, working together with the team of Project Wolf have just launched a shiny new WordPress plugin simply called MobilePress, the plugin will enable WordPress for mobile devices in such a way that the end user has a better viewing experience.

On his personal blog Tyler Reed the Founder of both Younique and Project Wolf says that MobilePress is “a plugin for WordPress, which allows users, designers and publishers to extend their audience and service by having specific themes for specific mobile devices or browsers.” Apparently blogs using the MobilePress plugin can be viewed nicely across multiple platforms and handsets, including the iPhone and other high end Nokia and windows mobile devices.

One of the readers of Tyler’s blog puts it this way when he says that this “plugin is definitely filling the previous, massive void.”

From reading a bit about this project and after seeing a few screenshots I am now convinced that this new plugin for WordPress will revolutionize the way blogs are seen and read when using mobile devices and this can only be good news for everyone, I wish Tyler Reed and his teams all the best in their future projects.

Oh and did I mention MobilePress is free to download and is open source! To download the file click here.

Before and after screenshot thanks to Allan Kent and MobilePress.

World’s highest-resolution commercial satellite - GeoEye - first image

The world’s highest resolution commercial satellite, the GeoEye-1 recently went live and the image above is the first image snapped shortly after opening it’s Eye in space.

The project which is partly sponsored by Google, will not only provide images to Google it will also provide images to the “National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), a U.S. government agency that analyzes imagery in support of national security.”

Now before we rush off and call this a “US spy satellite” according to the vice president of communications and marketing at GeoEye Mark Brender, “This is the opposite of a spy satellite, Spies don’t put info on the internet and sell imagery. We’re an Earth-imaging satellite, and we can sell our imagery to customers around the world who have a need to map and measure and monitor things on the ground.” This basically means they can sell images to anyone who can afford the rates.

Sadly though as usual there is always a catch and this time the catch is that “While the GeoEye-1 will provide imagery to the NGA at the maximum resolution of 43 centimeters, Google” and anyone else for that matter who can afford images “will only receive images at a 50-centimeter resolution because of a government restriction.”

The only good news is that luckily the NGA is not the only agency on earth who can afford the images and I can’t wait to see images in higher resolution on Google Earth

The iPhone 3G finally arrives in South Africa

Update: fring V1.0.4 is now officially available via the app store.

According to industry insiders in South Africa, this week we will see the release of the much awaited iPhone 3G. Customers who pre-ordered the phone will in theory be first in line to receive the new handsets when they go on sale on the 26th of September.

“The phone, which was originally expected to be released in July this year, will be available through Vodacom which has an exclusive agreement for its distribution in South Africa.” mybroadband.co.za

Out of curiosity I called up my local Vodacom store this morning, apparently pre-paid iPhone will sell for.

• R7695.00 - 8 gig
• R9120.00 - 16 gig

Sadly the much awaited iPhone 3G seems to have missed all the original hype in South Africa. With more than 6 Million iPhone 3G’s already sold world wide, it will be interesting to see what will happen on the day of launch. Will South African’s flock to Vodacom outlets nation wide to grab the iPhone hot of the shelves? Will they que for hours just to be the first to get their hands on the Phone? mmm well, Only time will tell

Welcome to the 4th screen

Here’s a creative look at how multimedia, entertainment and communication have evolved from the big screen to the small screen. Welcome to the 4th screen.

Thanks to Tyler Reed for originaly blogging this video and to Scott for linking it via Twitter.

Lets Go Green: Green your search

fring is on a constant drive to find useful ways to help fringsters go green. We have over the last few months reviewed many green techno gadgets and have offered solutions to help fringsters offset their carbon footprint.

One of the best ways we found to offset this footprint is to plant tree’s. Sadly planting tree’s and most of the other initiatives aimed at going green seem to be very costly and so not many people have the ability to make the switch.

Enter greenyoursearch.com this free to use Google based search engine is offering to plant 1 tree for every 1500 searches that go through its servers. This means all we need do is use their free service for all our online searches and by so doing we will be helping to reduce our carbon footprint.

This is probably the easiest way to go green we have ever seen and so without further ado lets all make the switch and greenoursearches today!

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

German fring Blog celebrates 1 Year on the air

My good friends Sebastian over at the German fring blog, today celebrated his 1st year of fring blogging.

Reportedly since it’s introduction back in 2007 the German fring blog has kept readers informed and entertained with more than 100 posts. During this time Sebastian also received 194 comments and Akismet blocked 1091 spam comments. This is a great accomplishment for Sebastian and for the German fring Blog.

On the 18th of July your very own South African fring Blog, the blog that has been speaking your language for just under a year now will also be celebrating it’s 1st year anniversary. It’s a milestone I am looking forward to seeing. See you there.

Smooth fring chatting on the iPodtouch

Following the awesome success of fring on iPhone and the many users who also downloaded fring onto their iPod touch (even though it was not designed for it), you asked and we delivered… fring has been tweaked for smoother, better chat on the iPod touch! (using the iPhone version….lol)

Just like the original version created for the iPhone, this is the same special pre-release R&D version with some chat bugs fixed so now you can mobile internet chat & interact in fring-style on your iPod touch (I know I am stating the obvious… but as there is no Microphone the iPod touch…. it means no fring calls as well).
More info on what you get and how to get fring for iPhone & iPodtouch at the fringcubator (fring lab).

P.S. Thanks for your flood of requests pushing us to optimize fring for iPhone so it works better on the iPod touch too - please keep your suggestions and feedback coming! We love the challenge and our R&D team doesn’t really need to sleep anyway

Taiwanese fring blog

Following the enthusiastic response to our other localized blogs, we are happy to welcome Jason Chen and CH Wang to the fring team, they will be blogging for all our Taiwanese friends and isnt it good to know that fring now has a Blog that speaks your language “Taiwa’fringe’nese”Welcome guys we hope you feel at home!

Bring it on! Talk, chat or interact with your new Taiwanese bloggers here: http://www.fringcall.com/tw/