Start video-calling your friends for free, from anywhere, on your mobile phone today!

After fring launched the world’s 1st video calling over Internet on Nokia touch devices, 2 months ago, we heard lots of requests for video on more phones, thus we are adding today video support to most of Nokia’s popular 9.2 series phones, including the ever-popular E71, E51, E66 and more.

Other Nokia device owners, worry not- fring will add video support for even more Nokia devices operating on Symbian 9.3 OS in a week or so…so keep following our blogs for the latest news!

So start practicing on your smile as fring video calling is coming your way in 10, 9, 8….

The fringTEAM

Hello fringsters,

We have some great news for all the users out there who’ve been waiting for a video supported version for the E71.

Since fring is all about sharing, we have a limited number of invitations for you to try out the new video supported version for the E71 and other Symbian 9.2 handsets.

The new pre-release version supports Skype and fring video calls over both 3G and WiFi.

If you’d like to be a part of the early access group all you need to do is fill out this form: http://bit.ly/fringE71

I’d like to emphasize the fact that this is a pre-release Alpha version. If you do not feel like being a part of the testing group you can wait a couple of weeks for the official version.

I’ll update the post once we run out of invitations.

Thanks,

SimonB

A few weeks ago fring and Nokia Ovi announced a joint competition celebrating fring’s launch on the Ovi Store.

The response has been amazing- close to a thousand fringsters around the world have sent in their pictures with their old phones and a reason why THEY deserve to win Nokia’s slick new touch-screened N97 mini. Some stories were touching, some were purely amusing and at the end of the process- 3 winners were chosen!

And the winners areeeee… (drum roll)

Thank you all for taking part and congratulations to the winners. Runners up have been published on the competition’s wall of fame so check out if you’re there!

Keep following our blogs, Twitter, Facebook page and Newsletters for new product updates, details of future fring competitions and other interesting surprises coming very soon.

Happy holidays,
The fringTEAM

The Nokia Calling All Innovators Africa challenge has come to an end and a HUGE fringing shoutout to the winners.

Nokia received over 125 submissions from Africa for the developer challenge and after much deliberation the top 10 winners have been announced this evening at the Mobile Monday event in Johannesburg.

As reported earlier, your local fring blogger submitted an application into the challenge and I am happy to say I took 4th place for the worlds first free mobi guide to snakes of South Africa.

Top ten winners and recipients of the Judge’s Choice Award:

1^st – Afridoctor by 20fourlabs

2^nd – That Roach Game by Breakdesign

3^rd – Sasol e.Birds by Coolideas

4^th – MrSNAKE by Simon Botes

5^th – Thumbtribe widget by Thumbtribe

6^th – LiveMobile by LiveMobile

7^th – Countdown 2010 by Christian Reeve

8^th – Surfing Safari by Aqua Online

9^th – Turn Left at the Barrel by Turn Left at the Giraffe

10^th – Mall-Buddy by Paul Hinrichsen

A big word of thanks to Nokia and Mobile Monday for pushing mobile development in Africa.

fringsters listen up, your local fring blogger is in the process of releasing the Worlds first mobi guide to Snakes of South Africa. This educational guide will soon be available freely on the Nokia Ovi store.

Due to time limitations the app/Mbook only includes a handful of the many snakes found throughout South Africa. I started with the most dangerous and common snakes and once I have more time and have sourced more development funding I will update the app to include all the snakes found in our country, I will also add support for more handsets and future plans include the addition of multi language support.

The guide has been entered into the Nokia Calling All Innovators Developer Challenge and I look forward to reading what everyone think of this unique South African App.

If like me you love playing with new things, drop me a line via Twitter or email ( simon AT fring DOT com) and I will happily send you the app.

Update: Download the application directly to your mobile handset by clicking here from your mobile browser.

Btw the guide has been tested and works on all Nokia Symbian S60 5th edition handsets . (Including Nokia N97, N97 mini, 5800, 5530 and X6 handsets.)

Back in May, Nokia announced the release of its much- anticipated application store- the Ovi Store. Ovi provides tens of millions of Nokia users worldwide with easy access to a whole lot of downloadable goodies from the Ovi website and WAP site as well as Nokia N97 users, on which Ovi is already pre-installed.

fring’s updated version has just been launched on the Ovi and we are looking forward to test out this new service ourselves. As you recall, the N97 is also already supported by fring’s latest 3.40 version so the lucky one’s who already managed to get your hands on the N97 can start enjoying the very social fring 3.4 and a whole lot of other apps from Ovi right away.

Nokia sure knows how to heat up the airwaves, yesterday at Nokia World 09 we saw the release of 3 great new symbian handsets The X6, X3 and N97 mini. Then to top off the day Nokia gave more info on 2 brilliant new products that are going to change the mobile industry forever. The Nokia Booklet 3G and N900.

The Nokia booklet 3G, is a Windows 7 based machine which comes jam packed with 120 Gig harddrive an Intel Atom processor, 10.1-inch HD display, Bluetooth, Wifi, hot swappable 3G, GPS and a built in SD card reader. To sweeten the deal it comes with a 12 hour battery life. Nokia says the recommended retail price should be about €575.00 (R6270.00) Not bad for this dream machine.

The Nokia N900 is the first linux based mobile handset delivered by Nokia. This uber cool device comes with a 3.5 inch touch-sensitive widescreen display, 1GB of application memory, 32Gigs of onboard storage (space for an addition 16gigs via SD plugin), Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi and much much more. I think this is possibly the hottest handset to come from Nokia this yearbut don’t take my word for it though, checkout the video below and decide for yourself.

Nokia fans will be happy to know that the Nokia X6 comes with music will hit our shelves by November 09. Sadly though there is still no word on when we will see the Nokia booklet 3G or N900.