pfingo grows a little

You may remember this service from Singapore operator StarHub named pfingo. Its core purpose is to be a VoIP solution so users can make international calls cheaply with any decent Internet connection. The pfingo application works on a desktop computer and there's also a Java version for mobile phones. Recently, StarHub updated us on its new features, some of which are quite interesting.

Getting a single instant messaging (IM) application to work on your phone isn't all that easy. Granted, some phones like those running Windows Mobile already let you get on MSN IM without any effort, but for most regular phones, you need to install a third-party application to get the job done.

Even if you don't use any of its other features, the free pfingo application will be immensely useful because of its multi-IM capabilities. With it, you can get on MSN, Yahoo! IM and Google Talk all at the same time, just like what you can do with the open-source Pidgin application on your desktop. Though it will run on most mobile phones, only some (like those running Symbian) which have multi-tasking capabilities will be able to keep it running in the background. Nonetheless, it's a useful addition to any mobile phone.

Another upcoming feature is YouTube access. StarHub is converting selected YouTube videos from the Web site to a format more suitable for mobile phones. These are then downloaded by the mobile phone from a StarHub server, allowing users to work around the problem of not being able to run Adobe Flash plug-ins on YouTube.

The downside to this is that you are limited to the videos that the people at pfingo have converted, which isn't very many at this point in time. What's more, quite a number of these videos have already been converted to a mobile phone-friendly format and hosted on m.youtube.com. It would be interesting if the service could be improved and convert videos on demand, making the full desktop YouTube available to mobile phones without Adobe Flash Lite 3 (like in some Nokia Nseries phones), which is currently the only official solution.

Aside from these, the pfingo app also has shortcuts to upload images to Flickr and to get updates from Facebook. But of course, StarHub's main goal for the service is for making calls, and it has included a new "ring back" service which routes your international calls cheaply and is still able to show your number on the recipient's caller-ID.

Look out for this new version of pfingo in the next two weeks. Only the SMS and calling features require a fee, so don't hesitate to try it out. Just pop over to the official site, sign up as a user and download the program there.

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