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A Webserver on Your Cellphone?
Mad_Rain asks: "I saw over on Make Magazine an article about using your cell phone on the Internet, except instead of browsing the web from your cell, you can serve webpages from your phone. Of course, it uses Apache, Python and a Nokia S60 series cell phone. I can imagine a couple of creative applications for webservers in strange places, but what else can be done with this?"
Just run a webserver and post in slashdot. I am sure accounts will be mildly entertained the moment they get the GPRS bill.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Make a phone call? NMo, wait, it's a *cell* *phone*, what was I *thinking*!?!?
This would certainly be an interesting experiment, but I would see many problems with this server going down, and speed being an issue...
The Citrix Metaframe client for windows CE, including Windows Mobile which runs on various smartphones and cellphone PDA's, actually uses a small web server to configure and launch the terminal session. Pretty Snazzy..
It can be used to spread viruses toeven more people who think they know how to admin a webserver.
At Macworld, everybody reported stuff instantly by writing it on their laptops and uploading via WiFi. However, what if WiFi weren't available?
With a phone like this, you could report on any event, anywhere (even if it meant just serving pictures and audio, since text input on phones is so bad).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Imagine giving your children a cell phone with a web server that hosts a web service that will respond with the GPS info. I could goto MyKid.ringdev.com and see exactly where they are. Obviously you would need some serious security. You wouldn't want just anyone to get that GPS info. But it would be great for finding a lost/stolen phone too.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Portable webcam
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
Is it just me or did that article look like an high school kids essay?
...doesn't mean you should. There are a lot of ways the things around you can be used and abused. Sometimes the use is a good one (e.g. potatos are great for getting broken lightbulbs out of their sockets), but I just can't think of any way that a phone webserver would be useful. More likely, it'll run up the guy's wireless bill and open him to various attacks.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Instead of calling a user, Ping him! I don't know how comfortable I would be having people surfing on my cell-phone. Could cause lots of issues like security, Battery-life, slashdotting (It's not so nice when the phone catches fire in your pocket ;).
how about some application to post snapshots with your phone using webcamrc into your web folder everytime there is motion. you could buy a phone and set it in a secret location and then just log into the web page to observe the goings ons... (bushism?)
Conversely, with the right software you can use your webserver to make phone calls.
If you really really want to it is also possible to beat screws into wood with a hammer, or alternatively with a banana frozen in liquid nitrogen.
sudo ergo sum
instead of browsing the web from your cell, you can serve webpages from your phone.
Was this by any chance in Soviet Russia?
sudo ergo sum
Honey, I tried many times, by my cellphone was slashdotted.
It could be interesting to use this to serve pages to the phone's own browser, to allow off-line browsing for phones who have no such function.
My other comment is funny
.... tooken by mobile phone to webserver and enjoy thousends of people downloading it via slow link
...of the time I loaded Apache on one of those pens with a digital clock on it.
Seriously, come on... who really needs a web server on their phone? Great! New holes for cell phone virus writers to exploit!
-William Brendel
Is it just me or would the best uses for this all be illegal?
Or perhaps I should say "obvious news". If you can easily run Apache, SSHd and others on your PDA running Linux how hard can it be to do the same on a mobile phone ?
but my cell phone is getting Slashdotted. Please leave a message...
There seems to be quite a number of largely trivial uses.
You could have some kind of massive spiderry bittorrent network that utilised the various communication methods available to the phone as well as IP to share files, ultimately resulting in a higher number of peers and or seeds. You could use a mobile phone\webserver combo for some kind of distributed CTI application.
I guess the major limiting factor would be the features of the phone itself; A gps enabled phone could use it's webserver as a HTTP based tracking device, or a camera phone could work as a webcam server to relay images back in semi-real time. Not sure what the advantages are of doing any of these with a phone\webserver though as opposed to the other available methods.
The only really usefull thing I can think of while timewasting at work is that it might be usefull though for remote computation of data. A field worker could be out collecting data. The phone could make available the raw data for processing via it's webserver. A client running on a pc could then be configured to periodically query the webphoneserver, retrieve the data, process and then make the results available for the phone.
This does also bring in issues about phones though, and when they stop being phones and become PDAs or even pocket computers!
It sure would be handy if I could get at the list of contacts on my phone, when I'm not near my phone... since the webserver runs on the phone, it shouldn't be too difficult to have it spit back the data that's in there. As for on-the-go uses for your own webserver, well for starters, you could host your own start page, (ala google.com/ig or start.com) right on the phone. In Canada, the initial home page for most of our cell providers suck ass. This could also keep your bandwidth costs down; not needing to download the contents of your provider's crappy cell phone portal page. Of course, once a webserver is running, the door is then open to various scripting languages. Have you seen all of what's available in the world of Python?
A product like this one brings some questions to mind about security and the ability to admin a server by the people this would be marketed to.
If you store alot of business phone numbers along with their personal info like e-mail, home numbers, etc, could this be hacked off the phone through the server? The abuse issues could be endless via users that have not one single clue about admining a web server.
Our technology seems to be out pacing the average citizen's ability to control it. Which is a paradox because everyone wants a better life through technology.
This has been another valuable and informative opinion from:
Catahoula!
Works fine on my Zaurus.
A web page with a 'take picture' button, then the picture displayed below. Leave it on a shelf when you go away on vacation, pluged in. Of course you could do with with a PC/web cam too, but the cell is portable. You could put a junker stake out car with one or two of these pluged into cigarette lighters and watch the crack house...
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
I have done a traceroute on several phish sites that have resolved to something on a wireless network. A prepaid phone provides the connection with no way to trace it back to an individual.
I don't know about other networks, but the ones in sweden (and Telia in particular, but probably others aswell) give out LAN addresses to their GPRS users, which puts them behind a NAT. Which, inturn, makes any kind of webserving useless (unless it's to other users of the same network, provided that there isn't several NAT's with their own copy of the networkspace).
:) so if it can be worked out, I'd be all for it.
I found out about this the hard way when investigating in a similar subject. The only way to solve it would be to have your own APN (Access Point Name) which gives out real addresses, and then you'd have to pay the ISP for all traffic on the APN. Not really what you want to do.
It's a shame really, but until we have IPv6 (so everyone and their pet can have a unique IP address) and more secure phones, which is especially important for those which run a "real" os (symbian, pocketpc, etc) I think it will be for the best. The last thing we need now is viruses which run up your GPRS data traffic (since most carriers charge for sent AND received data), it's enough with the SMS viruses IMHO.
Mind you, I wouldn't mind being able to run servers on my phone
Given the current state of things, there's not much point getting any more complicated than uploading phonecam photos to Flickr while you're out and about. (As it is, that costs a damn fortune.)
This has been done by HAMS (amateur radio operators) for at least ~10 years. Its called APRS, and uses small inexpensive handheld radios, a packet modem, and a GPS.. (and some handhelds even have the packet modem built-in). Weather stations can also interface to this.
There is a nation/world-wide network of stations that use the internet (and/or HF radio) as a backbone. There is even a webpage that will display a user's location on a map (can't remember the URL offhand). There are even specific frequencies reserved just for this purpose.
And this is all completely free... (except the equipment).