Since January of this year, travelers to the US under the Visa Waiver program are required to apply for authorization online, using the Electronic System For Travel Authorization Experience (ESTA). This is just to travel to the US, no guarantee of actually making it into the country. Basically, this simply lets you fill out the green I94W form online. It really has all the same questions (except that it asks for date of passport issuance in addition to expiration date, details like that) and even the screen has the same kind of green color. I guess they don't want to confuse people.

Visiting the actual ESTA site the first time is ... well, mind boggling, really. It shows a warning message/EULA that fills half the screen and that basically says you have no rights. Best thing? Your only option is to click OK. Hm, weird. But oh well, I had to use it anyway. After that it's just filling out the info. The system then tells you whether or not you are authorized to travel. In my case, it told me this right away, but the site implies it may take some time before you know for sure.

ESTA forms are valid for two years, or until your passport expires, whichever happens first. One would think this is all there is to it from now on, but I have also read stories that claim I'll still have to fill out the paper version next time I fly. That seems like a waste of time, but perhaps not all US border checkpoints are fully connected to the ESTA system yet.

As for the experience itself, filling out the form is easy, as long as you have your passport and travel info at hand. It takes about five minutes (including printing) if you're confident, probably longer if you want to double-check everything. No big deal to do this before a trip, you just have to remember. And remembering all you need to do for a trip isn't always so easy.

Many years ago, I bought my first mobile phone. At the time I wanted to make sure certain people could reach me at all times, in case of an emergency. This has always been the main reason why I carry my phone with me at all times outside of my house. After a while, I upgraded the phone to newer models and eventually to a smartphone/PDA. I still hardly ever use it to make calls, except for when I am running late for an appointment. The phone has always been just one of those things, and sometimes I will forget it for a day, and that is fine too.

Until a couple of days ago, when I was supposed to go somewhere after work. That day I forgot to bring my phone, and all day I felt uncomfortable. I never realized how much I depend on the phone to feel “safe” and comfortable knowing I can always get in touch with someone if I need to. I have noticed this with other people before. Now I have reached this phase. What's next, actually using the phone for stupid small talk calls to people I am about to meet in five minutes? Someone better stop me before that happens!

In a time when two major European Airlines (Air France and Alitalia) happen to be affected by strikes and delays, the EU has announced an e-mail address for passengers affected by matters such as strikes and airline travel problems. EU passengers can mail passengersrights@ec.europa.eu to receive help.
[Source] (in Dutch, try this for news in English.)

An interesting idea, which begs the question: how long will it take to get a reply from this address? Is it operated 24/7 with a quick turnaround, or will the wait for an answer take just as long as the wait for the delayed flight?

(Of course one drawback to this service is the high cost of mobile internet on phones throughout Europe. € 25/mb not being an exception when one uses roaming mobile web access.)

[Edit: fixed the English link, thanks ]

After some struggles (mentioned before here and here), the Dutch government has decided to ban voting computers (article in Dutch, and one in English). Paper voting is brought back from the archives. Electronic voting has several risks. One of which is eavesdropping , another is the problem of everything happening in a black box, without any way to guarantee the voting process is not being tampered with. [Source]

Voting with pencil and paper, that will be an interesting experience. I have never actually done that. By the time I was allowed to vote, my town had already made the transition to electronic voting. Usually when I go to vote, the volunteers helping out and watching the process are older people. Maybe they can help the young people with this strange thing called “pencil”.

My ISP, XS4ALL, used to provide free access to KPN Wi-Fi hotspots for an hour a week. No doubt this was in part because XS4ALL is a company owned by KPN, the oldest and probably still largest Dutch telecom provider. This week XS4ALL announced a major improvement of this deal: all XS4ALL subscribers get unlimited access to the 900 KPN hotspots.

This is good news for me, even though I don't use Wi-Fi as much as I thought I would, back when I bought my laptop with Wi-Fi network connection. I may be mobile, but my mobile internet needs are pretty much taken care of by my smartphone. Most places I travel to have internet access, so I don't need much connectivity along the road. Which doesn't mean I wouldn't appreciate full connectivity on my train rides though.

KPN hotspots are placed all over the Netherlands, including locations such as train stations, gas stations, and McDonalds, I think. In other words, in any big city I should always be fairly close to a hotspot. Out in the country is a different story. The one vacation place I visit almost yearly still doesn't have wi-fi. Perhaps this is a good thing, or I would spend all my vacation time online. I may be nerdy/geeky, but I still like the challenge of dealing with being offline for a while

This turns out to be pretty ironic. Ever since I got my ADSL connection, I have been careful not to generate too much data traffic. After all, there was a fair use policy that wasn't quite clear. Due to the nature of fair use, it is hard to know up front how much traffic you can generate. Today I found out that the fair use policy has been discarded almost two years ago. Ahem. So I could've saved me some stress if I had paid attention to that.

Since downloading a lot of stuff (including music) is still legal, I can now safely do so without worrying about data limits. Now I just have to worry about storage limits, my hard drive space is not endless.

This worked out well. I recently placed an Amazon order for some items that haven't shipped yet. Today I received an Amazon Gift Certificate. I was slightly bummed at this, since that gift certificate would have come in handy when I placed my order. So I went to see if there would be a way to apply the certificate to my existing order. Guess what? It is possible. Perhaps everybody knows this, but it was a pleasant surprise to me. Better than having the funds for future purchase, even though I probably will buy something again in the future.

Thank you to everyone who ordered something using my affiliate links, it is much appreciated. (I realize this makes it sound as if I can make my living off of affiliate sells, but trust me, actually making enough to get paid by Amazon very very very rarely happens)

Amazon now offers MP3 Dowloads. Legally, but for a fee. Kind of like iTunes, only without the DRM. Yes, that is right. If you buy your mp3 from Amazon, you get to play it on whatever device you want. Not limited to an iPod, but also playable on, well, an Archos for instance.

Individual songs are $0.89 or $0.99, albums are $8.99 and up. I have always said I am waiting for DRM free music to be available and easy to use before I would give up on downloading the music through P2P services. For really good songs, this is definitely an option. I didn't give it a try yet though, so I don't know of any possible barriers for foreign customers.

As I understand it, music is available in 256K MP3 format, which is better than the average home-ripped versions I have of my cd's. Amazon made a deal with Universal, so Universal artists should be available. Hopefully other companies will follow.

If you check out an artist with lots of songs and multiple versions of songs, it is easy to get lost. I checked out Eminem, and found that some songs have 4-5 different versions. I was thinking “they should just list the mp3's per cd” and what do you know? Every “real” cd now has a track list with links to buy the mp3 versions of individual tracks. You can also download the entire cd, but that requires use of the Amazon MP3 Downloader. No clue what that is.

The fun thing? Now you can select an album you know, and pick out the really good songs, without paying for the crappy ones that might be on the album as well.

It has been almost a year ago (well, almost 11 months) since I mentioned Penelope, a Thunderbird extension that aims to give users the functionality of Eudora based on the Thunderbird engine. As an avid user of Eudora, this was very welcome news to me. I really appreciate some of the functionality of Eudora, but no longer use it at work.

Thunderbird has the bigger development support since Eudora will no longer be developed, and on top of that, Thunderbird is open source. Free, with the option of people maintaining it even after the “owner” decides to stop development. Being able to use the Eudora-specific functions I like in Thunderbird sounds like an improvement. Right now though, it seems I will have to chose. Either use Thunderbird's shortcuts and options, or Penelope's. In the end, my decision will probably be based on how well I like Penelope's functions. At the moment there is less need to move to Penelope, because I am now very used to Thunderbird. Ever since I installed it at work, it has been a pleasure using it. To the point where I may no longer bother installing Penelope. Maybe I will do so at home though, even if just to give it a try. I have been waiting for some version that seemed stable enough to use. Last week the Eudora 8.0.0b1 beta version was released. This might be the version to experiment with some time soon.

It won't be too long now, and then I will get myself a (used) smartphone, a phone that also serves as a PDA. Since the phone will be able to use GPRS, this means I can go online and access the Interweb where ever I am. But how much will I have to pay for this get-my-internet-fix-anywhere feature? Well, good question.

I tried to find a decent comparison of mobile internet costs, specifically GPRS cost. There are some sites that examine UMTS cost, but UMTS is way faster than GPRS and more suited for laptops. Which means it's also much more expensive. Think $40 and up per month. No, GPRS has to be cheaper, since its speed is comparable to the old 56k modems. In other words, browse to a web site and wait half an hour for the page to load. (unless you visit the special pda/wap version of pages)

In the end, I visited a number of mobile phone provider's sites. It is hard enough to figure out all the basic phone plans, let alone figuring out the options including mobile internet. Oh, did I mention I really don't want a calling plan, but a prepaid option, since I hardly ever actually call anyone? Yeah, I know, why bother getting a smartphone instead of a pda then? Because I can, because it's fun to play with, and because it means carrying just one gadget instead of two everywhere I go. I think I keep digressing.

After visiting some sites, I can only say there is a big difference in costs. Some providers only offer mobile internet for subscription plans, some offer it for prepaid as well, but at a ridiculous cost (my current provider charges € 25 (approx. $32.50) per MB. Meanwhile, other providers have subscription or prepaid plans that cost € $7.50 with a data limit of 25 MB/month. My current two candidates are Orange World (€ 7.50 for 25 MB/month + voice plan, but it seems you can combine these so you only pay 7.50 if you don't call) and Rabo Mobiel. Rabo Mobiel is a plan run by a Dutch bank (Rabobank). The bank already offered internet banking and it recently added mobile banking over mobile phone to its services. To make life easier for customers (well, kind of), the bank even has its own subscription and prepaid phone plans. The mobile internet plan can be added to a subscription or used in combination with a prepaid plan and costs € 10 a month. The plan uses a fair use policy and its limit is currently set at 750 MB. At the low GPRS speed, I guess that amounts to over 30 hours of online activity. Sign me up!

Even though I may not go over 25 MB on a regular basis, I still think I will go for the Rabo Mobiel plan. That way I don't have to worry about going over my limit.