Something a little different for our readers today… Here is a mobile application that I thought would be worthwhile sharing with all of you.

FOUND, powered by Le Cool, is a free mobile service that is available to all of you that have Nokia handsets. Basically what it does is keep you in the know of all the rad cultural stuff your city has to offer. The application has recently been launched in South Africa, specifically for Johannesburg,  Durban and Cape Town and is also currently available for Sydney, Dubai, Vienna, Rotterdam, Lisbon, Paris, Moscow and Istanbul for the rest of the world.

Read more about app after the jump!

I downloaded the application and ran it on my Nokia for roughly a week just to see what kind of content the application would link me to. I set my location to Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town over various days just to see what it had to offer for the available South African cities .

The app itself is very slick looking and worked awesomely in both vertical and horizontal orientation which is always nice. FOUND loads up to it’s home screen  and shows you up and coming events / restaurants / films depending on how you set it up (you can set three categories that it filters content from). The user interface is nice and simple with the screen being left uncluttered by menus and unnecessary things. I’ll run you through my experience of each of the categories FOUND allows you to browse through.

“Culture” is the first option on the list and surprisingly always had a lot of content to choose from. Market theatre square happenings, fashion week, comedy nights, art fairs and a bunch of theatres showcasing various plays and performances, wine tours, city tours and even (for some strange reason) the odd ball entry of the Vida e caffe Greenside.

“Eating” contains a whole bunch of eateries ranging from bakeries to cafes to full blown gourmet restaurants offering the urbanite looking for a bite to eat a whole bunch of classy options. Each eatery has a rough guide on the price, hours and a little write up on the place. The list is fairly comprehensive and provides a nice guide to check out when you can’t decide on where to go.

“Film” provides a pretty comprehensive list of films that are being released as well as what is already showing. The Cape Town listing even includes the Labia Theatre which is pretty cool. The prices and times of the films is also available with a short summary of what the specific film is about.

“Music” seems to be pretty full in the Cape Town listing having entries ranging from jazz to acoustic sets to tango evenings. Durban and Johannesburg turned up very little over the week, which was a bit disappointing.

“Nightlife” was disappointing all round. Le Cool provides some pretty unusual club happenings for the cities in other countries but for the South African version it seems to only be big corporate events with the odd smaller party or club being hardly featuring. It would be nice to see even smaller events listed here to give some variety from the mainstream events that dominate here.

The final category to choose from is “Recommended” which is a decent overview of all the categories selecting some pretty rad items to do in a week. Think “I’ll totally use this when I go there for holiday again”!

No matter what category you choose an item from, it always shows you a price range so you know what to expect, a write up on the specific entry and has three nifty buttons to click on… You can show the specific place using your GPS and Ovi maps on your phone, send the details of the event / restaurant / place to a friend via sms / email or you can jump to the item in questions website and get more information there. There are also little surprises in each entry in terms of free give aways etc.

All in all the FOUND application is definitely something to check out, even if it’s just to help you decide on what to eat that night! FOUND is a powerful app that integrates brilliantly with your phone and makes use of the features available to it awesomely. Hopefully as time goes by more and more interesting and unusual options for parties and music will show up in the service although only time will tell.

If you are a Nokia user, go check it out at:
http://store.ovi.com/content/77A4CEB3483AE760E040050A8732252F

And let us know what you think of the app!

^5!

Technorati Tags: FOUND, Le Cool, Nokia, Ovi, Mobile, South Africa, Durban, Johannesburg, Cape Town

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