With WISPr, fringsters can now seamlessly roam within Wi-Fi networks, even in uncharted Wi-Fi territory!

Since we launched auto-roaming between 3G and Wi-Fi back in September, we’ve been busy whispering between ourselves and working on new ways to further smooth the transition for automatic roaming without user involvement. With WISPr, fring now recognizes any Wi-Fi network you have logged into before, even if you’ve never been to that particular hotspot. For instance, if you are a Cloud member and have first logged into fring at a café in Piccadilly Circus, fring will automatically recognize and log you into all other Cloud networks anywhere in the world as soon as you enter their hotspot zones. This can happen automatically without any manual involvement on your part, which is convenient and particularly valuable if you have an unlimited usage plan with a Wi-Fi provider.

WISPr means you automatically have the best call quality and biggest cost savings over Wi-Fi whenever in range of any Wi-Fi network you have previously logged into. Just like the current fring auto-roaming client, automatic handover between specific Wi-Fi hotspots within a recognized Wi-Fi network is activated in idle mode and not during a call.

Right now fring only WISPs on Symbian 9.1 phones but we’ll keep the rest of you posted on developments! See our original post for more info on fring auto-roaming or how to activate it.

To activate fring auto-roaming or WISPr (if you are already auto-roaming), just go to options > settings > connection manager > search for WLAN. Choose a Wi-Fi network and enter your credentials.

So now, simply enter the zone and you’re online!

Please keep us posted on your WISPr experiance!

Google has updated their mobile GMail Java application to version 1.5 for their glorious GMail service.

The new features of the applications are,

• it runs much faster
• it uses less mobile data traffic
• Option to attach a “Sent from Gmail for mobile” footer to your outgoing messages
• View the full details of your GMail contacts
• Save a message you’re drafting to “Finish Later”

Point your Mobile web browser at http://googlemail.com/app and download the updated application now!

fring will be at the Symbian Smartphone Show in London next week, 16-17 October, where we’ll be keeping ourselves busy with some speaking engagements and catching up with friends from the Symbian industry.

If you’re going to the show and spot one of the fring crew, don’t be afraid to come over and say ‘hi’. And if you’re not going to the event but want to go…what are you waiting for…visit the website and get your FREE (yes FREE!) pass to the show for your yearly dose of all things Symbian in London.

If you’re a member of the press, or analyst community, and would like to meet up at the show please contact Jon, jon [at] fring.com.

We’ll be putting photos from the event on our Flickr page, stay tuned for more.

Well, it looks like someone at McDonald’s has been reading our blog!!

Days after we posted about the joys of Wi-Fi at McDonald’s in Belgium and Israel, ZDNet.co.uk reported that Wi-Fi will soon be available in its 1,200 UK restaurants. This is courtesy of a partnership with our good friends at The Cloud.

Maccy D’s reckon if you pay to log on to Wi-Fi for an hour per week their Wi-Fi will save you as much as £260 per year – we like cost savings like that at fring!

Does anyone have any requests for the McDonald’s guy/gal reading our blog?

My request is free burgers for everyone with a fring-enabled phone…reckon that’s a bit too hopeful?!

One of the great things you can use fring for is Twitter. Twitter is a global conversation of people sending in their short text messages of what they are doing right at that moment. Twitter is a great way to keep up to date with what your friends, family and business associates are doing wherever they may be on the globe.

A lot of business people also use Twitter in their work environments especially those that are spread over multi sites or have international offices. The instant access to the Twitter streams, whether on your PC or your via your mobile, means you are tapped into the source wherever you are and when ever you want to. As one of my friends put it, “you are mainlined into the world’s thoughts”.

The great thing about using fring is that you can jump into this tantalising tittering of Twitters and be part of the communication revolution real time.

So people who use Twitter are finding out that it can be all things to all people as it is a conversation, a bulletin board, a blog, a dating service, a news source, a friend finder………

Want in? Then head over to Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ and sign up for an account then plug your sign-in details into fring.

Here’s a video we put together showing how it works….
http://www.youtube.com/v/WdQicVM2CfU

Twitter on fring can be a bit infectious, so consider yourself warned!

From the “it must be true if Apple says it” files….. it looks like Apple is trying to stem the torrential flood of iPhone users who are fleeing AT&T’s exclusive rights to the device by scaring them into submission.

Digital Media Wire has this post about how Apple is publicly warning their users that they could cause their iPhones to go into melt down, or cause Global warming or even bring upon us the end of the world as we know it, if they hack the device to use non AT&T SIMS…… yeah right.

So, if you are one of those happy chappies that have purchased their iPhone from eBay and are currently walking around the UK using it with a local carrier SIM then you are a very bad dude indeed.

Shame on you for wanting to be an early adopter!

Pawl has emailed us a question about the folowing…

I found this great software after long-time looking for such thing. Do I have to buy any internet plan add-on or 3G/GPRS data packet-transfer add-on to use fring? I installed fring on my handset and it is working great using my home W-LAN, but any time I try to connect thru 3 network it fails.

Pawl, thanks for your email and yes you do have to update your mobile plan to include mobile data (GPRS/Mobile broadband).

I would go to 3 UK’s website here 3 UK Mobile Broadband plans and check out the different data plans they have available.

Thanks for using fring Pawl!

All you Belgian fringsters out there, listen up cos we’ve got some tasty news for you…

McDonald’s has agreed a deal with free-hotspot.com that will see both companies team up to provide free Wi-Fi in McDonald’s restaurants in Belgium, says Computer Weekly in the UK.

That means each of the 25,000,000 McDonald’s customers serves each year in Belgium can enjoy fring’s delicious mobile VoIP service with their burger and fries.

Wi-Fi in McDonald’s is also happening in Israeli, here’s to hoping this great idea spreads round the world to a fast-food joint near you!

Serious problem in the Skype world at the moment with a pretty nasty virus/worm that can infect PCs and use Skype to replicate itself. The virus sends random chat with fake URLs that incorporate SCR files. It can look like that someone on your Skype list is chatting to you.

Be very careful about downloading any content ESPECIALLY if it is from someone you know.

For more details see the post from Simon on our South African blog here

For those of you who have subscribed to the BBC on your mobile carrier’s portal, will know that there isn’t a better way to catch up on the news, entertainment and weather whilst on your mobile.

After trying to show a friend on their mobile how to browse the web, I discovered they had a preinstalled URL to the Internet mobile service of the BBC on their device. As I used it as a demo to show them what you could see on the Internet for mobile I was quite impressed with the level of information they now have on this site.

Head over to the BBC mobile web info page here to see all the goodies available!

OR point your mobile browser here http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile

OR Text BBC to 81010