Nun lädt die Seite ohne Probleme und man bekommt eine Übersicht über alle bisher verknüpften Geräte und das neue Gerät, mit dem man gerade die Seite besucht. Nach einem Klick auf das gewünschte Gerät lassen sich nun alle Kalender auswählen, die dort angezeigt werden sollen.

Nach der Auswahl der entsprechenden Kalender öffnet man auf dem iPhone/iPad seine Kalender-App und klickt oben links auf den mit “Kalender” beschrifteten Pfeil. Hier erscheinen nun alle zuvor ausgewählten Kalender und können nach Belieben ein- und ausgeblendet werden.

1. Option “Travel & Surf” buchen
2. Im Ausland direkt übers Handy einen “Day Pass” erwerben
3. Surfen

Schritt 1: Option “Travel & Surf” buchen

Zuerst einmal muss man sich die Option “Travel & Surf” zu seinem normalen Tarif dazu buchen. Die Option ist kostenlos und verursacht erst dann Kosten, wenn man im Ausland einen so genannten “Day Pass” erwirbt. Also flugs auf http://t-mobile.de einloggen, “Tarifoptionen” anklicken und dort die kostenlose Option “Travel & Surf – Europaweit günstig surfen …” buchen. Alternativ wird das auch über die telefonische T-Mobile Hotline gehen. Nach maximal einem Tag ist die Option aktiv und wartet bis zum Auslandseinsatz kostenlos auf ihre Nutzung.

Schritt 2: “Day Pass” erwerben

Auf der Infoseite zu “Travel & Surf” findet sich eine Übersicht aller “Tagespässe”. Hier sind als “DayPass S” zum Beispiel 10 MB Datenvolumen im europäischen Ausland für €1,95 / €2,95 zu haben – nutzbar innerhalb von 24 Stunden. 50 MB schlagen mit €4,95 / €5,95 zu buche. Nutzer mit Laufzeitvertrag zahlen den günstigeren Satz, Prepaid/Xtra-Nutzer müssen einen Euro mehr berappen.

So weit so gut. Eine extrem wichtige Information konnte ich auf der Webseite aber nicht wirklich finden: Wie bucht man diese “Tagespässe”, wenn man erstmal im Ausland unterwegs ist? Obwohl auf der Webseite nirgends zu finden, ist dies wirklich extrem einfach geregelt: Beim Überfahren der Grenze sendet T-Mobile eine SMS:

Willkommens-SMS: “Willkommen in den Niederlanden. Sie nutzen Travel & Surf. Um Daten nutzen zu können, benötigen Sie einen der folgenden Pässe. Xtra DayPass S (2.95 €, 10 MB, 24 Stunden gültig): SMS Text “XEUS” oder Xtra DayPass M (6.95 €, 50 MB, 24 Stunden gültig): SMS Text “XEUM”. Buchung unter kostenlosem Link http://pass.telekom.de. Oder senden Sie eine kostenlose SMS mit SMS Text XEUS oder XEUM an 7277. Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an Ihren Kundenservice: Privatkunden: +49 171 252 2202; Geschäftskunden: +49 171 252 2828 (Preis je nach Tarif im Ausland).”

Hier zeigen sich also die beiden Möglichkeiten: Zum einen kann man auf die SMS einfach mit dem Text “XEUS” oder “XEUM” antworten und bucht so das entsprechende Paket. Als Antwort bekommt man dann die Bestätigung:

Bestätigungs-SMS: “Sie haben folgenden Pass gebucht: Xtra DayPass S (Ländergruppe 1) zum Preis von 2.95 € (Brutto). Nach Verbrauch können Sie jederzeit unter http://pass.telekom.de einen weiteren Pass buchen.”

Hat man 80% seines MB-Guthabens verbraucht, folgt eine erneute SMS als Erinnerung:

Volumen-Warnungs-SMS: “Sie haben Ihr Volumen zu mehr als 80% aufgebraucht.”

Die noch bequemere Möglichkeit: Man ruft die Seite http://pass.telekom.de im Browser auf (nur erreichbar aus dem Ausland). Das ist laut T-Mobile erstmal kostenlos. Dort findet eine Übersicht über alle verfügbaren Tagespässe (Bild 1). Wählt man einen aus, muss man diese Wahl auf der nächsten Seite noch einmal bestätigen (Bild 2). Nun folgt eine Buchungsbestätigung (Bild 3). Kurz danach erhält man dann noch obige Bestätigungs-SMS. Übrigens kann man jederzeit zu http://pass.telekom.de zurück kehren und findet dort seinen aktuelles “Restguthaben” an MB und die noch verbleibende Zeit, in der das Guthaben verbraucht werden kann (Bild 4).

Hat man sein Guthaben verbraucht, folgt wieder die Willkommens-SMS und man kann erneut ein Paket buchen. Bei mir klappte das auch mehrmals an einem Tag. Die ersten 10 MB hatte ich recht schnell verbraucht und habe dann nochmal 10MB gebucht.

Übrigens: Mein Weg führte über die Niederlande nach Belgien. Den in den Niederlanden erworbenen “DayPass” konnte ich bei Grenzübertritt nach Belgien ohne Probleme zu Ende nutzen.

So, ich hoffe ich habe mit meinem Post einigen von Euch den ersten mobilen “Auslandseinsatz” erleichtert. Alle Angaben natürlich ohne Gewähr.

PS: Bei einigen Handys muss man das Daten-Roaming erstmal manuell aktivieren. Beim iPhone z.B. unter “Einstellungen”/”Allgemein”/”Netzwerk”/”Daten-Roaming”.

Location with WLAN switched on

Knowing where you are is one of the essential things in urban life and web 2.0. Some weeks ago, I was using Google Maps on my iPhone. And guess what, it was locating me at a completely wrong position. Instead of being located at my new offices location, the iPhone located me 1 km north-east, at my old offices location. And judging it from the size of the blue circle around the location, it was pretty sure it would be right. Well, how could this be?

GPS
Since the introduction of the iPhone, almost all phone manufacturers provide some kind of functionality to locate yourself. Though many of us think this is always done by using the well-known GPS, this is is not really true. Even in case a mobile phone has a GPS receiver, is it not 100% sure that it can be used to determine your position. GPS tracks down your position by connecting to satellites. But you need a connection to at least 3 GPS satellites, to get some meaningful information on your position.This works best, when the phone is located under a clear sky. In cities or even houses, this is not really possible. So there is a fallback solution called “Assisted GPS” (AGPS). This simply means: In case it takes too long to find a real GPS connection, there are some fallback meachanisms.

Triangulation
The first fallback is called “triangulation”. When a mobile phone is connected to a network, it is always connected to a signal providers antenna. Depending on the signal strength, you can determine how far the phone is away from that antenna. If in reach of three different antennas, the phone can approximate where it is located. It still does not know EXACTLY where it is, but it can make an educated guess.

WLAN / WiFi
The second fallback is wi-fi (WLAN). Most modern mobile phones support these wireless network connections and always scan for available WLAN networks. This is great for positioning: If you are in reach of a WLAN hotspot and you know where this WLAN hotspot is located, you know where you are. When Google was sending around his streetview cars in Germany, it was also detecting wireless networks – and mapping their global position. So with this data, you can also make an educated guess where you are. It is even more accurate than the “triangulation” explained before,  since the signal reach of a WLAN is much less (200m?) than a mobile phone providers triangulation area (~2km).

Location with WLAN switched off (only Triangulation used)

Where it breaks
The only problem: A network providers antenna is always located at the same position. WiFi routers might not. Last spring we moved office. The new building is built with a lot of steal, not really good for signals coming through. So there is a very bad GPS connection, the phone connection is also not so well. So my iPhone falls back to WLAN detection. Looks like on my iPhones “World WLAN map” my office WLAN is still located at our old location and they did not do any updates so far.

So the whole fall-back plan is working fine, until people move house/office and take their WLAN routers with them. Let’s hope that the iPhone software is clever enough to trust the “more accurate” WLAN data only in case its’ estimated location is WITHIN the “less accurate” triangulation location. – Otherwise you and your WLAN router might move to Japan, and your iPhone still thinks it is located at home.

So the typical
<input type=”text” name=”user_mail” />
turns into
<input type=”email” name=”user_email” />

Check out our mini example form.

Why using the new input types?

Letting a browser know the purpose of an input field might make him offer specific input helpers. For example, entering dates often comes together with website-specific date-picker widgets. Date, email and URL input fields are often validated using Javascript. This way, typos and invalid input are already filtered out on the client-side. Until now, these tasks had to be coded by a web developer. With HTML5, the browser supports them natively. So there are advantages for all stakeholders involved:

1. Web developers: Less work.
   No need to add code for validation / helpers (date-picker, …).
2. Web users: Consistency.
   Same validation and helpers on ALL web pages.

Current state: Mobile browsers

iPhone: <input type="text" />

If you take a look at the mini form example using the iPhone Safari browser, you will find out that it does not validate the fields. But it does something else, which is quite cool: When filling a normal text input field, the iPhone shows the regular touch keyboard. For email and URL input fields, it displays the according special keyboards, which only contain allowed characters for the given fields.

iPhone: <input type="email" />

Normally, the @ sign is hidden in the alternative keyboard. So entering the @ requires three different clicks (“switch keyboard”, “@”, “switch keyboard”). The specific email input keyboard shows all valid characters on one keyboard, including the @ sign.

iPhone: <input type="url" />

Same for the URL input keyboard: It contains almost all necessary URL characters on one view and also has the “.com” shortcut at the bottom.

These days, entering data on mobile devices is still a bit of a pain. Even better, when such great user experience features can be used to take a bit of the pain away!

Current state: Desktop browsers

Good news first: In case an outdated browser does not understand the new HTML5 input types “email” and “url”, it will handle these as regular “text” fields. Modern web browsers (Chrome, Safari, FF6+, IE9+) are aware of the new field types and offer client-side validation. Let’s take a look at the browser with the biggest market share, Firefox 7.0.

In case you enter text into an “email” / “URL” field and the input is considered to be invalid, Firefox adds a red border to the field. When you try to submit the form, it won’t let you and present a message stating “Please enter a valid email-address/URL”.

Some validation examples for input type email:

• foo => invalid
• foo@ => invalid
• foo@bar => valid
• foo@bar. => invalid
• foo@bar.b => valid
• foo@bar.boo => valid
• fooä@bar.boo => invalid
• foo@barä.boo => invalid
  

As you might see: Firefox only validates the syntax, not whether the domain oder country code really exists. Very important for non-english users: Firefox currently threats an email containing special characters like German umlauts as invalid, although these are perfectly valid. This is an internal Firefox bug, which is still pending.

Some validation examples for input type url:

• foo => invalid
• http => valid
• http:// => valid
• http://foo => valid
• http://foo.com => valid
• http://foo?ä.com => valid

URL-Validation seems to be not really implemented right now: Just entering “http” is enough for being valid. Messing up domain names with special characters or entering invalid domains is not recognized to be invalid.

Conclusion

Given the current browser support in late 2011, you cannot use the new HTML5 input fields “url” and “email” to let the browser reliably validate user input. You also have to be careful with international email addresses, as Firefox might even block valid addresses in case they contain umlauts & co.

A great benefit is already implemented on mobile touch devices like the iPhone. Depending on the input field type, users will receive exactly the right touch keyboard for filling the input field.

After releasing MyGeoPosition.com in 2007 and the according GeoPicker API in 2010, I found it was time to make geotagging for web blogs even simpler: So I just released a complete integration of MyGeoPosition.com into the popular WordPress blogging system. What does the new plugin acutally do? For every WordPress post or page you can save geodata like longitude, latitude, the placename or region. You can either do this manually or use a fancy geopicker mapping tool for this task. Just enter a location, hit search and fine tune the result using a drag & drop marker in the map. All geodata is filled in automatically. Just check: http://api.mygeoposition.com/wordpress/

The entered geodata is presented in three different ways:

Geo-Metatags:
The standardized Geo-Metatags are mainly for letting search engines and other spiders know, which place on earth the current blog post is releated to.

Geo-Posttags:

Just like you add regular “tags” to a blog post, there is also the possibility to use standardized geo post tags. The plugin generates these automatically for you. It is the “geotagged” tag to give an indication that the post is actually tagged and “geo:lat=xxx”/”geo:lon=xxx” for the location itself. This data is intended both for humans and for search engines or blog aggregators. As a little bonus, the city name is also added (this is more for the humans among us).

Geo-Feedtags

Since it is quite normal to publish your blog as an RSS feed, there is also the need to include geodata into this one. The plugin will do this for you, as well. Blog aggregators will be happy to find this important information.

And what is your job in all of that?
To be honest: Not really much. Just add the geodata manually…

…or click the “Open geopicker tool” button to search for a place and finetune the result using a drag & drop marker. In case you are using a modern web browser, you can also click the cross-hair button next to the search input and the W3C geolocation API will automatically detect your current location. This works very well on mobile devices with a built-in GPS antenna. With a regular desktop computer at least the city will be located.

Hitting “Return data” fills your geodata input fields. All the rest is done by the plugin.

Grab the plugin from the plugin website…
http://api.mygeoposition.com/wordpress/

Or from the official WordPress page
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mygeopositioncom-geotags-geometatags/

I hope you like the ease of geotagging your WordPress blog posts with this new plugin. If you have any suggestions, questions or other feedback, just leave a message.

For many of us that might have happened while doing an internship in another country or a semester of studies abroad. Usually, you are already in your 20ies when something like this happens. Quite late, isn’t it? And depending on social context, financial strength and also the will to get off your couch this might never happen. Really a shame. So the good news is: There is a project funded by the European Union, which tries to target this problem. The “Comenius” project focuses on creating collaborations betweens schools from all European countries. So learning about your European neighbors does not start when you are already paying your rent, but when your biggest problem is whether the girl next door will answer your love letter with “Yes”, “No” or “Maybe”.

My girlfriend happens to be a teacher at a primary school, and the beginning of this school term also marked the beginning of her schools 2-year-collaboration with 6 other schools across Europe. From 2011-2013, her pupils will connect to peers from Finland, Italy, Romania, Spain, Turkey and Wales. In emails and video conferences they will chat about their daily life and learn more about their neighbors wishes, hopes and future perspectives. And since we are living in the age of Web 2.0, they will also blog about their experiences: Feel free to follow them at http://comenius-handsandfeet.eu.