After installing and testing, the good news is, it works, bad news is... it's a first release.  Call quality was OK, but the person on the other side said it sounded like a cheap microphone.  I don't know if the problem is with the software, or the fact that the iPhone wasn't built for VoIP.  In either case, I am glad that it was finally released, hopefully they improve the compression or work out the bugs to improve quality which would also hopefully allow it to work over data networks.... a boy can dream can't he.

A for effort
C+ performance

Source: http://www.fring.com/

Ето къде може да прочетете ръководство за работа с Fring за IPhone
Ако някой има впечатления от софтуера и иска да ги сподели, моля да използва коментарите към темата.

Hace unos días os comenté de esta aplicación y de sus características, pues bien, ya está disponible para su descarga "gratuita" desde la tienda de Apple, su descarga se puede hacer directamente desde el iPhone, o desde la tienda de iTunes. Ojalá pronto todos mis amigos la descarguen para poder hablar...

fring is a VoIP application that lets you use Skype, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, Twitter, Yahoo!, and AIM clients to chat and instant message. Well, the good news is that fring is available now for free in the Apple App Store and can be loaded on your iPhone without any jailbreaking required.

fring will run on your iPhone or iPod Touch and works over the WiFi network. You can even make SkypeOut calls with fring so if you are traveling fring may be the application you want to make low cost and free calls on the road.

Are urmatoarele feature-uri :

-> Skype;

-> Yahoo;

-> MSN;

-> ICQ;

-> GoogleTalk;

-> AIM;

Desde que a Apple liberou os desenvolvedores para criarem aplicações de VOIP (desde que não usem a rede de dados e somente WiFi) que se esperava alguma solução interessante. O Fring saiu na frente, na realidade ele já existia no submundo das aplicações não autorizadas. Agora ele está na App Store e o melhor de tudo: é free.
Ele conecta em várias redes, como pode ser visto na imagem, e faz ligações também no protocolo standard SIP.

Corred a la AppStore y descargad "Fring".

Fring es la aplicación que muchos usábamos en los iPhones de primera generación (a través de Installer), y que permite, entre otras cosas, tener un completo Skype en el iPhone. Pues ya esta disponible, y gratis, en la AppStore. Y ademas, mejorada.

Os recomiendo descargarla de inmediato, pues ya se sabe como las gastan las operadoras cuando oyen hablar de voz IP, y lo volátiles que son algunas aplicaciones en la AppStore.

Es decir, ya podemos tener skype (y skype-out) en el iPhone, oficialmente y sin tener que hacer JailBreak.

Continuará... :)

Nota: vaya, acabo de probar y parece que las llamadas de voz están "capadas" cuando estas conectado por 3G y sólo te dejan hacerlas con wifi. :(
Ya me parecía demasiado bonito esto...

Now, with fring you can message buddies from Skype®, MSN® Messenger, Google Talk™, ICQ, Twitter, Yahoo!™ and AIM®. And, the most important, you can make free calls with other fringsters™ or via fring using Skype, Skype-out or any SIP providers you choose. WiFi environment is required for all the mentioned above.

Bye the way, fring is free on App Store now. Go get it and try it out.

System Requirements:

• iPhone 3G, original iPhone or iPod touch with the 2.0 firmware (or above) 
• Internet connection (Not a WAP connection) on your iPhone. 
• Download fring on the App Store. 

Notes:

このアプリはWiFiネットワーク内でのiPhoneによるSkype通話を実現度するもので、今までは脱獄しなければインストールできないアプリでした。

今回、正式にApp Storeにて無料でリリースされたんでが、念のため早めのダウンロードをおすすめします。
携帯会社からすれば出て欲しくないアプリなので消されたら嫌ですし。

このfringはSkype以外にも色々な
サービスが利用できますが全部ご紹介するほど詳しくはないので利用できるサービスのスクリーンショットをアップしておきます。

これで実質、iPhone同士では家族でなくても24時間「ただ友」が実現しましたね。

El popular servicio de conectividad para dispositivos móviles, Fring, ya está disponible para el iPhone. Anteriormente, Fring estaba disponible de manera ilegal en el iPhone a través del Jailbreak, pero ahora ha sido transferida a la App Store, de manera 100% legal.

Fring nos permite contar con un cliente de mensajería instantánea para varios servicios como MSN Messenger, GTalk, Yahoo!, AIM entre otros. Pero lo mas interesante es que cuenta con un cliente VoIP, por lo cual es posible realizar llamadas de voz con Skype, MSN Messenger y GTalk; o incluso hacer llamadas a teléfonos y lineas comunes a través de Skype o SIP. Unicamente es posible hacer llamadas VoIP utilizando Wi-Fi; no se permite a través de la red celular. Fring es completamente gratuito y está disponible en la App Store de Apple.

Enlace: Fring iTunes App Store

Finalmente anche per il dispositivo di Cupertino è arrivato il momento di saggiare il vero potenziale del Web anche attraverso Fring!

Fring, per chi non lo conoscesse, è uno di più famosi client di IM (Istant Messaging) e VoIP disponibile per diverse piattaforme. Fino a poco fare, la fortuna era riservata soltanto agli utenti di Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm OS e simili, ma da pochissime ore è disponibile sull'App Store la versione per iPhone e iPod Touch.

E' possibile scaricarla in maniera gratuita direttamente da iTunes.

Per vedere come funziona, nel bene e nel male, dovrete aspettare domani che avrò modo di poterlo utilizzare in maniera più approfondita.

Qualche piccolo aggiornamento. Durante la registrazione di un "New User", se avete una email il cui indirizzo prima della @ contiene il carattere ".", verrà rifiutato e vi restituirà l'errore di "Invalid email address". Vi consiglio quindi di utilizzare una mail senza il "." oppure di togliere il "." dalla vostra email (alla fine serve in casi di emergenza per ritrovare la password).

Personalmente ho aggiunto Skype, MSN e Eutelia VoIP come client SIP.

 Provando una chiamata utilizzando Skype, verso un utente sempre Skype (su un iMac),    l'audio risulta decisamente molto chiaro, con un buon grado di pulizia. Solo si nota un  leggero gracchio di fondo alla voce ma nulla di rilevante al fine della qualità complessiva della telefonata. Parlando di lag e quindi ritardo sulla conversazione, ho riscontrato 1 sec./1,5 sec. di ritardo nella telefonata. Nulla di allarmante eh, era giusto al fine di descrivere al meglio il prodotto.

Con MSN le conversazioni risultano avere la stessa qualità di Skype ma il ritardo dovuto al traffico che gira su internet è decisamente inferiore allo stesso protocollo Skype. Siamo intorno ai 0.5 sec/meno di 1 secondo. 

Continuando a provare le potenzialità di Fring, ho impostato per funzionare con Eutelia VoIP, uno dei più economici provider che offrono servizio VoIP presente sul territorio nazionale. Provando a chiamare un numero fisso, il lag si riduce praticamente a zero e la qualità audio migliora di poco. Non arriviamo ai livelli di una telefonata fisso-to-fisso, ma l'interlocutore fisso assicura una nitidezza audio eccellente, mentre chi utilizza l'iPhone avrà una qualità superiore alle due prove precedenti.

Originating from a vision of freedom, fring was born out of a desire to fundamentally change the way people communicate. The fring founders, veterans of the mobile, internet and high tech industries, joined together to create an easy to use, consumer-centric, truly converged peer-to-peer service, enabling its users to take control of their online communications from one single place on their mobile phone, utilizing the handset’s inherent internet capabilities to do so.

fring sits at the heart of the fringsters™ online communication world allowing the freedom to communicate with all popular communities’ members (Skype®, MSN® Messenger, Google Talk™, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo!™, AIM®) without boundaries, and regardless of device, network operator, platform or the community(ies) to which they belong.

The ethos of encouraging freedom and mobility extends to giving fringsters the choice between available connection types (3G, EDGE, GPRS or Wi-Fi) and the enjoyment of fring’s benefits without subscription; fring is totally free to download and free to use - the only cost incurred by the user is the mobile internet connection.

I did use Fring and i find fring very nice and useful . Try today.

Alessandro Dell'Acqua

His Spring collection was puzzling: part hippie chick, part couture ..
It was kind of ethnic a little bit native American ..there was fringing in mixes of suede and ostrich feathers ..the colours were soo cute (nude colours white and baby pink)  ..

Gucci

Comparing it to winter collection it was disappointing to me really ..
Frida Giannini had called this collection "Gucci Exotica,"..
I LUVVVVD the backpack that transforms into a carryall.
The sunglasses were AMAAAAIZING and the shoes were to D.I.E for..
Giannini has always included a boyish suit with a narrow "Frida pant" somewhere along the collection but there were also girly stuff (beach-babe bikinis, tropical prints, and filmy disco dresses) ..

Roberto Cavalli

His collection was not as glamazon or dreamy as last summer’s collection.. In fact, it was a bit all over the place..
The only things missing were Cavalli's signature animal prints, slightly ironic given their omnipresence elsewhere in Milan.  (sad)..
In the end, it looked like there were too many cooks in the kitchen.

see yall soon

Ciao a tutti!
Ucci

Other providers such as Truphone and Gizmo are expected to follow with their own N-series clients. Before you get too cheerful over the service, it might be worth noting that Om's most recent post on the topic hinted that mobile VoIP users could be locked into walled gardens by individual services now that Nokia has taken out the native SIP client.

And for the hardcore VoIP users who need to bridge back to the less technically literate, TringMe is offering a worldwide telephone number folks can call that will ring you on your land line, TringMe mobile-VoIP client or GTalk. Connecting to a land line will require actual money (in the form of credits in a TringMe account), but it's worth checking out.

Asterisk users who might be looking to hook up their phone systems to this device via Wi-Fi may be out of luck as well. But let's be positive, for someday in the near future, popular VoIP services will work on the device; after all, Nokia and its sidekicks claim as much.

In the meantime, here's what the N96 does offer:

1. Live TV via DVB-H in Europe.
2. 2.8-inch display to watch movies and 3-D stereo speakers to listen to the soundtrack. It can store up to 40 hours of video, supports all common video formats such as MPEG4, Windows Media and Flash Video.
3. 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and a flash. It captures videos as well, making it a good tool to replace a dedicated video camera. It is easy to capture short and on-the-go videos with this device.
4. GPS, radio, Wi-Fi, 3G (European), something called N-Gage gaming, and more.
5. 16 GB memory that can be boosted with a 8GB memory card. (Sandisk is selling these for really low prices.)

These features are nice, but the problem is that in order to use them, you still need to go through many menus and press quite a few buttons. I get very frustrated with S60 phones these days, especially because Apple's iPhone has shown me a better way to get to all these applications. Nokia, despite its grand vision of a mobile data planet, is unfortunately still looking at the world in an old-fashioned way.

Nokia's N96 prompts me to ask the question: Where is Nokia's touchscreen response to the iPhone? Samsung, LG and even tiny HTC have rolled out their versions of touchscreen devices. Sure, they aren't very good, but at least they're trying. Sony Ericsson today announced a new "panel" approach for its Xperia device -- a strategy that reminds me of the iPhone dashboard.

It has been over a year since the iPhone was launched, and Nokia still doesn't have anything new to show except for some videos. Sign of a company that is, well...yes, I'm just going to say it...too bureaucratic. Either that or they've decided to adopt the ostrich approach to competition.

Servicios Web

De momento como web social estoy usando Facebook, para cotillear y poder comunicarme con esa gente del pasado ya que en España se usa bastante poco y la mayoría de mis amigos y conocidos no tienen Facebook.

Para gestionar mis fotografías artísticas y recibir comentarios diversos, criticas y votaciones de otras personas aficionadas uso Ipernity aunque también lo estoy usando para comunicarme con la familia y poder compartir todos nuestras fotografías y vídeos para estar mas cerca los unos de los otros (solo familia mas allegada).

Por otro lado me valgo de Qik para subir vídeos de mis viajes o determinados momentos al instante desde mi celular|móvil.

Last-fm para de alguna manera gestionar las canciones que tengo y escucho, y conocer nuevos artistas y grupos musicales.

Twitter ya que se integra bien entre la mayoría de los servicios web 2.0. anteriores y puedo así informar de lo que voy a haciendo o no, tanto si subo un vídeo con Qik como si voy a la playa, etc... O comunicarme con los amigos vía sms ya que tiene un sistema para enviar mensajes de aviso al móvil|celular.

Y por ultimo Lifestream que engloba de alguna manera todos estos servicios web 2.0. en una única web donde va actualizando los cambios que yo vaya realizando, también es necesario comentar que Facebook también tiene esta posibilidad en la sección de mini-noticias, por lo que podría prescindir un poco de este servicio, aunque sigue siendo útil para que aquellas personas que todavía no tienen Facebook puedan seguir mi lifestream.

Aplicaciones

Como aplicaciones ligadas a los distintos servicios web de los que me valgo utilizo, sobre todo para el móvil|celular, Shozu para subir y actualizar estado, fotos, vídeos y demás tanto en Twitter como en Facebook o Ipernity entre otros, Qik para subir vídeos a su web y Fring para comunicarme por mensajería instantánea tanto por Messenger como por Skype.

Extra

Adicionalmente comentar los servicios Delicious que utilizo para gestionar mis marcadores (favoritos) y OpenID para el acceso a distintos sitios webs que permiten este tipo de autenticación.

LifeStream: http://lifestream.fm/zot

2. Fring (free mobile calls)

3. Palringo (instant messaging)

Se trata de los Nokia N78, 6550, 6210, 6220 y 5320, todos móviles que funcionan con la versión Symbian 9.3.

sólo hay que ir a la página de descargas, cargar tu información y pulsar en “Join”.

la propia Nokia recomienda actualizar antes con el Nokia Software Updater para que no se produzcan algunos problemas detectados en el N73, N93, N80 y E61.

Vía | fring

Carriers did not view these technology developments too kindly since it prevented them from extorting exorbitant amounts of cash for costly long distance connections, leading to the rise of mobile-VoIP players such as Truphone, Fring and Gizmo Project.

But now the Finnish giant seems to have developed cold feet, and some of its new handsets, such as the new N78, are not VoIP compatible anymore. Many of these new phones are not on the list of Nokia’s VoIP compatible handsets. It is not clear how the older phones are going to be impacted. A reader tipped us off about this apparent change in the latest N-series phones.

…the N78 (and also to affect the forthcoming N96) which is that Nokia has very quietly and seemingly sneakily redacted their built-in VoIP / SIP implementation in all phones that come with Symbian Series 60 3rd generation Feature Pack 2 (otherwise abbreviated as S60 3.2).

I have a N78 lying around so I decided to test it myself. And lo-and-behold none of the VoIP services I am accustomed to using worked. Truphone and Gizmo are two services I typically use and neither of them work.

Ditto for Fring, a VoIP-IM service as well. However, all three worked on the Nokia E71 smart phone. When I asked Nokia if this was true, the company sent me this response, which pretty much admits that is the case, though it didn’t say why.

Nokia Nseries is committed VoIP services as part of its offering. That is why we have included SIP stack and improved the developer VoIP offering in S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 by enhancing the VoIP APIs to improve the call quality, as an example.

A Nokia VoIP client is not included with the Nokia N78 and the Nokia N96 and VoIP solutions based on this particular client such as Gizmo will not work. However, Forum Nokia will cooperate with third-party developers to support them in porting their applications from S60 3.0/3.1 releases to S60 3.2. One example is Fring, whose popular application will be offered via Nokia's Download! service for the Nokia N96.

Truphone isn’t waiting around for Nokia to do something. A company spokesman told us: “From Truphone’s perspective Nokia has removed the VoIP client from all the N-Series phones for the planned future. We are putting in a replacement client functionality so that existing customers are not orphaned.”

The theory is that Nokia isn’t mucking with E-series devices because they are more enterprise focused. Since VoWLAN is more popular with the corporations, Nokia can’t afford to remove the VoIP functionality. It is one feature that makes the phones more competitive with say Blackberry.

On the consumer front, however, voice-over-WiFi has become a thorn in the side of carriers, as exemplified by actions of carriers such as T-Mobile against VoWiFi-startups such as Truphone. Furthermore, the emergence of 3G has made it easier to route calls over the 3G network.

Funnily enough, the decision to back away from built-in VoIP comes at a time when fixed mobile convergence is finally beginning to gain traction, especially in Europe and Asia. In the U.S., Nokia launched a handset that works with T-Mobile's Hotspot@Home service.

Nokia has to be taking a lot of heat from carriers over making VoIP easy on its devices. Whichever way you look at it, I think it is a bone-headed move by the company, which should be trying to out-innovate its competitors and be more open in terms of its features.

The decision also brings into question company’s new mantra of being open and open-source friendly. Being open isn’t about releasing some software in open source, but it is about having an open mind. Shutting down a much loved VoIP feature isn’t exactly the right move.

As our reader very aptly wrote:

….does this move by Nokia really appear to be the type of move that is indicative of a culture shift towards open source per the Symbian Foundation? Google is already culturally rooted in open source (its entire infrastructure runs on Linux clusters). I am not so confident about Nokia’s ability to shift to open source…