Aki Anastasiou from Talk Radio 702 recently chatted to frings Neal Fullman during his Technobyte segment.

Here’s the podcast - Enjoy http://www.pod702.co.za/podcast/technobyte/Technobyte20090209.mp3

As you may know the fring team are out in Barcelona, working hard and spreading the fring love! We’re really excited to announce the news that last night fring won the Mobile Monday Community Award (emerging startups category) at the MoMo Peer Awards 2009. Following several elimination rounds which started with thousands of entries from mobile services & applications worldwide, fring was eventually shortlisted to one of 20 companies selected to battle it out for the coveted award in last night’s finals. A 3 minute, 3 slide Powerpoint presentation was all that stood between us and the prize, and we were delighted to find that the global Mobile Monday Community had awarded it to fring. The Community Awards were picks based on voting from all International Mobile Monday Chapters. What makes this latest accolade really cool is the fact that it represents recognition by other members of the mobile industry – a highly critical, expert (and clearly very clever) bunch of boys and girls. Thanks guys we’re really thrilled & very honored.

Following an early Beta phase, fring had its official launch at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona two years ago in 2007, so we’re celebrating our 2nd anniversary at the event this year…and what better than a top industry prize like a MoMo Peer Award for a great birthday present!

Here’s a picture of Neal, fring’s International Communications Director collecting the award.

Sebastian from the German fring blog recently posted this great video he found via macbug.de and I could not help but post it here also, amazing how things have changed in the mobile space over the years. Sit back now relax and enjoy this little bit of cellphone humour

The hard working boys and girls over at Google have launched a great new service simply called Latitude. Latitude works on both mobile and PC, and having played around with it for a bit, I’d say this application really has great potential.

Latitude plugs directly in Googlemaps on your mobile and installation is easy and fast. Seeing friends on a map is really easy using latitude and I found the program works brilliantly. Adding or removing friends is simple and security and privacy settings are clearly marked and easy to modify.

Now although the word killer app jumps to mind, I personally think it will be a while before this application becomes very popular in South Africa.

At first glance Google’s application rocks, I found myself getting all excited. Sadly though Google’s street maps in South Africa are really poor and half the time you can’t see the roads. Lets face the facts, the satellite images may be cool but they don’t really help much when navigating in a hurry.

During October 2007 I reviewed a South African location based social network called The Grid, they had only just started back then but even at that time their localized maps where vastly superior to GoogleMaps.

Isn’t it time Google upgraded their South African maps?

Apart from the street map issue I really enjoyed using Google Latitude and think it’s an amazing application, I look forward to seeing updated and improved South African street maps sometime soon. Hint hint Google. To get your hands on Google Latitude simply follow this link: google.com/latitude

Hey fringsters

As some of you probably already know,

“The fourth annual MobileSunday - an unofficial, informal and generally cool and funky gathering of mobile bloggers and their chums - will be taking place in Barcelona on the eve of this year’s Mobile World Congress“

Last year’s MobileSunday was attended by about 400 people. This year the event has been moved “to one of the coolest bars in Barcelona, the CLUB MIX for a bit more space and a jazzy, loungy atmosphere.”

The fring team will be on location at MobileSunday which happens on Sunday, 15 February 2009 and we look forward to meeting up with any fringsters who will be attending, please leave a comment if you’d like to meet up with us. Don’t forget to reserve your spot here.

See you in Barcelona

The fring team

‘A conversation on Twitter with Marshall Kirkpatrick of RWW about the top tech blogs to read in Africa” recently started a chain of events which lead to a very cool post by Erik Hersman aka “HASH” about 30 great African tech blogs .

Anyway to cut a long story short, we are very excited to say the fring blog made the list. Thanx Hash

To see the full list of Great African Tech Blogs head over to Erik’s blog.

In 2007 we brought you the news that Neotel, South Africa’s second national operator had signed a contract with SEACOM to land a new sea cable in South Africa by 2009.

Well the good news is that the cable is almost here, according to SEACOM “From June 2009, southern and eastern Africa will finally get truly connected to international broadband networks.”

“Telecoms prices are expected to drop by as much as 90percent by June when major cable networks open up direct broad- band connectivity to Europe, Asia and the US.

The cable has been laid from the edge of the South African waters to Mozambique and cable laying is also proceeding in the Red Sea from Egypt towards the coast of Yemen.

A third ship is currently being loaded with the remainder of SEACOM’s deepwater cable which will be deployed from India towards Africa, where these three cable segments will be joined. ” this according to mybroadband.co.za

The cable which will connect South Africa to Europe and India, will also land in Mozambique, Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya and UAE.

With a capacity of 1.28 Tbps this cable will bring much needed bandwidth relief to Africa.

We look forward to June with anticipation, bring on faster and cheaper bandwidth for all