Good news for South African fringsters! You can now topup your fringOut account without needing a credit card.

HOW?

1. Go to any Picknpay, Shoprite or Checkers store
2. Buy a ukash voucher at the till
3. Create / Login to your cashU account and load the ukash voucher to cashU
4. Login to your fringOut account
5. Load your cashU voucher
6. Start making fringOut calls

WHY?

1. With fringOut you can call cellphones and landlines cheap, VERY cheap! From 1c per minute

So what are you waiting for, get a ukash voucher today and start saving on all your calls both local and international.

UPDATE: It appears that there is an issue in SA with this payment system. In the rest of the world this works well.

fringsters listen up

This is your opportunity to shine and show us just how much you love football, your mobile phone and fring. In exchange we will give 3 fringsters shiny new Nokia N97 mini handsets courtesy of our freinds over at Nokia and Ovi Store. *

To this affect we have just lauched the fring football contest on our facebook. We now invite you to upload your fring-a-fied football pictures to our wall and get your friends to “like” them. The picture with the most “likes” wins.

We have made it easier for those who are not at the soccer to enter using cut and paste graphics as per the sample below. However we encourage those of you lucky enough to be at the football to us your imagination, creativity and send us some way cool fring-a-fied football images.

As they say in the movies, may the best fring-a-fied picture win

1. Download this image

2. Using some nifty computer software paste the hardhat above over your other image. As per the sample below. If you havn’t got such software get your friends to help you.

3. Upload your fring-a-fied picture to this facebook wall.

4. Get your friends, family and co-workers to upload their own pics and “like” your pictures.

5. To get extra coverage and more brownie points link to them from your facebook, twitter and other social spaces.

6. Thats it. Now sit back and watch as the “likes” roll in and you may just be the next winner.

To see what others are uploading click here. We look forward to seeing all your fring-a-fied images soon.

*Terms

As we get closer to the quarter finals of the Fifa World Cup Soccer and things start to heat up here in South Africa, We thought it good to remind everyone that fring is the only low cost mobile way to send home some exclusive soccer video action to friends and family.

So if you are in South Africa for the 2010 World Cup Soccer, why not share the love by live streaming your soccer experiance to those back home who are not as lucky to be at the game.

Millions of fringsters world wide are now daily video streaming to friends and family, in fact this is one of our most popular features. So if you have not yet tried fringVIDEO give it a try today.

What are you waiting for live stream your South African soccer experiance to a friends of family today!

fringsters, did you know you can now learn the South African Sign Language Alphabet using your mobile phone?

South Africa has more than 1.5 million deaf citizens, in the USA the number is closer to 9 million and in the UK it’s around 8.9 million. Thats almost 20 million people in only 3 countries.

With such a high number of deaf people globaly surely there should be an easy way to learn Sign Language to help narrow the gap in communication between the hearing and the deaf.

The newly launched range of HandSign mobi guides aims to close the gap by helping hearing folks learn the most basic of alphabet signs so that they can then communicate with the Deaf.

The first 3 guides in the range are:

1. South African Sign Language (Live in Ovi)
2. American Sign Language (Coming soon)
3. Canadian Sign Language (Coming soon) (Live in Ovi)

You can download these premium guides and more via the Nokia Ovi Store. Why not take a few minutes every day to learn the sign language alphabet in your country so you can spread the love and communicate with a deaf friend in your area.

fringsters listen up, I have great news for you!

Vodacom has just finished upgrading a huge section of their network (more than 3300 towers across South Africa) to support 14.4 Mbps Internet speeds. As for the rest of the network you guys will have to make due with the speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps on 3G. The great news is that with speeds of between 7.2 and 14.4 Mbps fring calling and video stream quality on the Vodacom network will be vastly better than on other local networks

A little birdy tells me that Vodacom is also testing 21.1 Mbps HSPA services on their network but this will only go live laters. So it looks like there are only good things to come. Watch this space for progress.

Vodacom 14.4 Mbps internet goes live on 1 May 2010

Crowdfunding, the first crowd funded Angel investment agency of it’s kind in South Africa made history last week by raising just over R1 million in Angle VC within only a few days, Proving yet again that South Africa is alive with possibilities.

The money pledged by 229 investors will be used to fund 10-20 small techno startups in South Africa. This is the chance of a lifetime for many local startups wishing to prove to the world that their idea is The Next BIG Thing!

The fund which continues to grow is currently standing on R1,035,000 from 315 investors. Apparently the first 1000 investors to pledge will be accepted. So if you havn’t jumped on the bandwagon yet there is still chance of getting in before it’s to late.

Your local fring blogger, yeah thats still me, has already submitted 4 idea’s for funding and I will keep you guys posted on developments on this front. I am happy to say that the Crowdfund has once again brought hope to many small garage startups in South Africa who have been suffering to scrape together funds to keep their dreams alive.

I am excited to announce that very shortly a few of these startups will have the priviledge, no the honour, to take their dreams to new hights. May the best fringing team be granted funding and guys when you make it to the big time, never forget to help those dreamers still trying in a garage or backroom near you.

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.)