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

Attention, Attention, drum roll… we’re very excited to announce that fring version 3.4 has just gone live.

As you probably already know most of us have several social circles developing in parallel, I mean who uses only own social tool these days? At fring we’ve been listening to what users of social media really want, and especially our community of fringsters, using this valuable feedback from the community we came up with a few new solutions mashing up all your separate communities of friends into one manageable, mobile interface via fring.

From now on, fring lets you easily create one rich, dynamic profile for each of your contacts so you can see what anyone is up to at a glance, and interact via all your mutual social networks/services directly from one combined profile. It’s all happening on fring!

So what does it mean?

• No more multiple listings for the same friend!
• Viewing a fringster’s profile, you can see whether he’s currently available via fring, Skype or MSN, and other IM services.
• We “hint” you when a friend from your regular phone book or another social network like Skype, AIM etc is also a fringster so you can add them to your fring friend list and complete their personal profile.
• You can control how your fring world sees you! You can update your own fring profile photo, mood status and nick name

How do you do it?

• To merge together multiple contacts, follow these steps: In buddy list, select the user you want to merge > Go to “Manage buddies” > choose “Merge buddies”> it will take you to your buddy list. Scroll down to other names for the same contact that you’d like to merge > Click OK to check the box next to each > Hit Save. You’re done
• To update your profile click on Options> Edit my profile> Options> and choose Update picture/ Update mood text/ Change nickname.
• When initially registering to fring, you will be alerted of all your GSM and social community friends who are already fringsters. Once you start using fring, we’ll let you know when other friends become fringsters by clicking Options>Manage buddies > Friend finder.

These new features currently work on all Symbian devices; Windows Mobile and iPhone are coming soon. Full feature- list for the new version can be found here. Get your new version today.

A full feature- list for the new version can be found here.

Official press release is available here.

Have fun - and as always, let us know how the new unifying fring works for you!

fring Team

Hi guys

As you know, we released the new iPhone version a few days ago and the feedback so far has been great!
Several people have asked us about their always-on presence option even when fring is turned off, so here is a communal explanation for y’all:

The new Always-On feature keeps you logged into fring even when the fring application is closed on your iPhone/iPod touch.

It works like this:

To activate the Always-On add-on, click on ‘More‘ –> Add-ons –> Always on.
You’ll get the following screen

Enter the email address you have configured into your iPhone and click ‘Send‘
Within a few seconds you should get an activation email. Open the email on your iPhone and click the link to activate the service.

Once you’ve clicked the link and activated the service you can click the home button and fring will keep you logged in. This of course works with all the services you use on fring ( fring, Skype, MSN, Google talk, ICQ, Yahoo etc)

How do I get the notifications?

To get the notifications in real time you should have your email address configured to be “pushed” to your iPhone/iPod. Once you got that done, you’ll get an email whenever someone’s trying to call/chat you. Just open the mail and click the link –> fring will open up on your phone and display the message.

If you don’t click the link within 5 minutes - we will log you off from the Always-on service and won’t send you more notifications until you log in again to fring (we don’t like spam…)

I’ve registered to the add-on, Now I want to go offline, How do I do that?

Open fring, click on ‘More‘ –> Add-ons –> Always-on.

You’ll get the above pop up. If you click on ‘Disable’ we will log you off from the service until the next time you open fring. Or, you can unsubscribe from the add-on completely (but why would you want to do that ! ? )

A few things:
1. Currently this feature is available for UK and US users only but no worries… we will gradually make it available to all countries.
2. Once you’ve subscribed to this service we will keep you online for between 2-4 hours. This time frame may vary based on country as we are still fine-tuning this process in order to optimize your experience.
3. As we mentioned in the initial blog post, this feature will eventually use Apple’s 3.0 firmware notification SDK, once it’s made publicly.

We are hoping to add more countries in the next few weeks so stay tuned for more news.

As always, your comments and feedback is much appreciated!

The fringTEAM

Hey guys,

We have just released a new version of fring for the iPhone.

This updated version includes:

1. Improved dialer (a drop-down list with country flags, saves typing in the country code)
2. Improved GUI
3. New ‘Settings’: Hide/show phone contacts; hide/show offline users
4. A few Bug fixes
5. Always-on Add-on

The “Always-on Add-on” is designed to solve the fact that Apple doesn’t allow application to run in background. This is how it will work:

• iPhone fringsters subscribe to the add-on in order to use it (through the add-on catalog)
• Once you log out of fring, your buddies will still see you as logged in (green) if they message you, you will get notifications by e-mail whenever someone calls/chats.
• The e-mail is sent to your mail client on the device itself and contains a link.
• The link takes the fringster directly to the message he’d missed on fring itself.

This feature will be rolled- out gradually, 1st in the US & UK…the duration of which your friends will see you as “online” may vary, based on your geo location and will be adjusted by us, over the next few days, based on users’ feedback” This service will eventually be in line with Apple’s 3.0 firmware and new notification feature.

To get it, simply download the update from App Store.

As always, we’d love to get your comments and remember if you continue to give us your great feedback, we’ll continue to make fring even better!

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

Hey guys,

I was just tipped off about a blog post by the hot and sexy 5fm DJ Poppy Tshongwana, Poppy is inviting her readers and listeners from the KFC Global Express to PIMP THEIR CELLPHONES “WITH THESE COOL MOBILE APPLICATIONS”

She goes on to say “Stop crying about the fact that you don’t have an iPhone - that doesn’t mean your phone is rubbish, you just need to beef it up a little and give it a second life.”

The 5fm blog then goes on to list the mobile applications that they feel are “the best” and we are excited to say that 5fm not only thinks fring is “cute” they also feel we are one of the best. hehe

A big thanks go out to Poppy and the 5fm team for their vote of confidence, thanks also to the fringster who tipped me off about Poppies post Btw Poppy when are you guys going to integrate a fringME Widget into your site?