Slashdot Mirror
When Cellphones Become Webservers
An anonymous reader writes "Nokia is experimenting with turning mobile phones into webservers, according to an interesting article on Linux Devices. Nokia has ported the Apache webserver and a few other software modules to the Symbian OS that runs its phones, but there shouldn't be any barrier to adapting the technique to Linux mobile phones, since it all appears to be released under Linux-friendly open source licenses. Just think of the possibilities of having a webserver in your pocket!"
I won't be satisfied until Adobe ports Photoshop to cell phones. Now we're talking.
Vibrating cell-phones that vibrate based on hits to the server!
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
Hell, there is webserver software for the Commodore 64. Why not a Cell Phone?
... and in the DRM, bind them.
Just imagine the battery life of your cellphone after a slashdotting! :-p
Just think of the possibilities of having a webserver in your pocket!
Imagine the small fires which would result after a slashdotting.
Actually, more to the point I'm not sure I would like to even browse to a website whos physical location could be mere inches away from a pair of betty swallocks!
liqbase
Is that a web server in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
But then with opensource, I can figure anything out... like using Skype to make my calls while my faithful website viewers are still able to browse my ever-so-important website in my pocket.
Imagine what happens when your unsuspecting cell phone gets slashdotted. If you are a guy, you can kiss your chances of fathering children good buy.
a phone melted to you thigh does not sound like fun.....
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
At least now when the police raid your torrent server, everyone can call and tell them they're pissed.
"Just think of the possibilities of having a webserver in your pocket!"
None!
Other than the geek/hack value (well... it is Nokia that is doing it, so that point is kind of lost too!), what is the purpose? Seriously. I don't get it.
Swedish Police seize Pirate Bay server decoys, Real Server Escapes In Man's Pocket.
What has it got in its pocketses, my love? Tricksy little serverses, sneaking awayses from us!
If these are deployed and left, they will become vulnerable eventually. Right from the beginning, a means to update any service that is listening needs to be built in, particularly with something as widespread as Apache. The user should have a choice: either update without asking, or receive a message when new updates are available, and a recurring message if the updates are not applied. The last thing we need are a million webservers that are deployed and then sit unpatched until the phones aren't used anymore.
I never clip my fingernails for fear of dangling symbolic links.
Imagine one of those phones being slashdotted, the sheer amount of radiation and electricity involved would cause the said nerd to spontainiously combust in an excellent display of nerdyness...somewhat like a moth to fire.
From TFA, the web server does have i.e. mod_python, so there should be some programmability there. I could see using the web server as a proxy - maybe for security reasons, but even more for automatic downloading & caching of web pages as the user moves in and out of connectivity.
The possibility of paying massive bandwidth fees to Cingular, for example.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
When I hear "raccoon" I think about the little buggers that raid my trashcans looking for food when I'm not around, they always seem to find a way into the cans & make a mess.
Why would I want to put somthing that reminds me of such a mess on my phone ?
Rather unfortunate choice of project names if you ask me.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
a cell.phone with a 2-way radio function,
that links to another one, when out of all
coverage areas... not a web-server... FWIW.
To be able to run distributed computing applications like BOINC on your cellphone when it's not in use. It would suspend the activity when the battery charge reaches a user-defined limit.
You could crunch units at night while your phone is charging.
I just don't get it.
A web browser, I can see the use of (though currently most non-text-only pages look like crap on tiny cellphone screens, and even text-only doesn't look great). An email client, sure. A terminal emulator (aka "telnet/ssh client" for you whippersnappers) so I can connect to and manage a remote web server (if absolutely necessary - see point 3 below), yuppers.
But an actual web server?
First, my phone has an okay battery just sitting idle, but in actual use it dies within a few hours. Running a web server implies basically continuous use, so the thing would end up always on a leash to either a car or AC outlet.
Second, although I have pretty good cell coverage in my area, I do still drop the occasional call. Do we really want to add a http error code, "604: server drove into a tunnel"? (And yes, I do realize that would probably come back as a 503... Just a weak joke).
Third - I would not want to use a phone's crude keypad to try to maintain a web site. Even if I bought into the rest of the idea, I could see myself realistically connecting to my phone remotely from a real PC to do any updates or maintenance.
I just don't see the point. This smells like a solution in need of a problem, IMO.
Just think of the possibilities of having a webserver in your pocket!
... uh, no. Aaand not that. Hmmmm....
Ok, hmmm, let me think
*chirp* *chirp* *chirp*
OK, you got me - what are those possiblities?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I don't see much use in this... Ususally (at least in GSM GPRS and UMTS 3G networks) the phones are behind one or two NATs. That is, all packet data users of an mobile operator are seen to the internet as coming from the host gprs.mobile.operator.com, or the like. You cannot directly connect from the internet to a specific mobile phhone's IP address, regardless of the existence of a mobile web server there.
NATting is partly done to protect the mobile users from excess traffic. Imagine someone pingflooding your mobile's IP address, and you paid for data packet traffic by the kilobyte! :)
I see this webserver porting more as an technology demo from Nokia's part: "Hey look how cool our phone operating system and programming platform is!", instead of being a real, useful application.
is that a beowulf cluster in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
Already done in 1999 with an Apple Message Pad and a cell modem.
t cred.html?pg=10
http://www.wirednews.com/wired/archive/7.03/stree
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Q: when can i grab that excel spreadsheet off you ?
A: its on my phone at the moment, you can grab it off that anytime tomorrow if you like
Q: can i see what you are talking about
A: sure let me turn on my cam and ill show you
pull instead of push
A mesh network server would mean an instant user owner internet that is already deployed!
No matter what lobbists tried to get congress to throttle the internet into tiers!
That mean free internet anywhere that you can daisy chain cellphone links unless the send and recieve frequencites cell phone suse are not the same as cell tower send frequencies.
Perhaps the qualcomm walkie talking phones would work? or FRM family radios with 5 mile range?
been waiting for someone to build hand held laser send and receives witha usb connector for computers running mesh netwroks. That would make some bandwidth fast!
Geopilot
www.globalboiling.com
I've ran an FTP server on my PDA for a while, but decided to shut it down when everyone just kept leeching and not uploading any warez or pr0n.
Is mod_perl available for Nokia's Apache?
You know how much it sucks to have to configure your phone's settings--not just time and date, but network preferences, calendaring options, notifications, and all the rest--on the phone itself? Now imagine firing up Safari and simply browsing to your phone's configuration page, where everything's explained in full sentences in a format human beings can read, not crammed into 1 square inch at 288 dpi, and where you don't have to press twenty nubby little buttons every time you want to change one setting.
This could be one potential use for a webserver on your phone. Given the complexity of your typical cellphone, I'd be glad to configure it through an interface that sucks a little less.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
I mean, why not just port Lighttpd? It's smaller!
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I think this could be quite useful, especially in conjunction with encryption as email starts to get less and less useful.
Here's an example, I worked on a bunch of documents flying home on Continental yesterday. I could have copied those up to my cell phone web-site from my mac as soon as we landed, which could have then auto-synched onto the company web-server for example, as I was driving home.
Obviously a cell phone web-site would mainly be useful for local content such as recently snapped pictures, notes, directions, and act as a locally accessible online presence for a real person. In this case, it doesn't replace a full web-site, but possibly acts as a locally discoverable 'business-card' for people in nearby physical proximity, similar to what we could do with beaming between palms.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
I don't believe it was running there on the final product, though. Which is good, since you'd have to invoke the Java service management framework manually and give it some time to start up before using it...
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
With all the hype of rapid development frameworks (Ruby on Rails, TurboGears, etc) it's easier than ever to make web applications, for yourself or someone else. It's also damn easy to install them. Only problem? They require a web server.
Having a webserver on your cellphone, even if it's only accessible to you, is extremely useful. You can build your own truly cross-platform applications without having to worry about crazy microjava doodie.
In terms of power consumption, why would it have to be continuously active? It can have a "sleep" mode just like anything else on a cellphone does. It's not like your phone has a continuous open line to someone. When you finish talking to someone, it goes into a sleep mode and waits for the next call. A webserver could work the same way -- when you use it, it fires up. When you stop using it, it takes a nap. Both, you and your battery, are happy.
I, for one, welcome our Cellphone-hosted website overlords.
- shazow
Well, what about doing a HTTP POST to send you a free text message instead of an expensive SMS message (provided you have flat rate GPRS or something like that). Or perhaps people at work could upload some files to you that you'll need.
For a geek, it should be no problem to think of some cool applications. But I agree that it won't become mainstream fast. I don't even know if most cellphone operators provide real public IP addresses to cellphones. My operator, T-mobile, seems to, but I've never actually tried listening it on a TCP port and connecting to it from the net.
( ^_^)/
WTF?!?
...
... ...
... dumbasses.
A Web Server on your cell phone? What would you serve off it? The only application I can possibly think of is to serve as a way to get those stupid lo-res pictures off your camera phone. Other than that, is there any reason to introduce such a critical security flaw into your phone?
Are you going to include voice-recognition software so you can blog-on-the-go?
How about posting those sappy text messages from your soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend?
Not to mention how the hell you're going to get any other content you want to host onto the cellphone in the first place...
Not worth the risk, IMHO.
Now, I just got this kick-ass idea
Let's port ftpd over to a cell phone, so you can upload mp3s to it, and listen to them on your phone, and maybe even use the cell transmitter to broadcast the tunes to your car's radio and you could even use them as your own personal cell phone hold music
Lagito ergo expectabo
"Is that Apache in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"
I did what you said, I put in my 5 1/4 floppy labled tcp/ip stack and pressed load"*",8,1, I think it would have worked, but I suspect my Norton AntiVirus is eating up all my ram.
Ooooh, the possibilities of thousands of new subway-skulking, escalator-camping, shopping-aisle-creeping upskirt websites featuring up-to-the-minute access to tiny low-light, pixelated, camera-phone quality picts and movies...
And how about a new, inexpensive streamlined method for someone (big brother/nefarious ned) to find out where you are, what direction you're heading, and who you're talking to all in real time by typing in a web-server address?
Possibilities, indeed.
The first thing I would do is have the phone update to a page, wherethehellismyphone.com. I would have this constantly updated with rough GPS coordinates. I'm not sure what phones can tell you their rough GPS coords, though. But it could give you all sorts of useful information in case the phone is lost or stolen -- what it last saw, where it was last used, etc.
I mention this because I recently picked up this laptop, and one of my first plans is to get a GPS card installed in it. I'll have it running something netstumbler-like, and if it's lost or stolen, it will do its best to log in and upload the GPS coords to wherethehellismylaptop.com. So, if my laptop is lost or stolen, and the thief leaves it turned on while passing through any open wifi or going online in any way, presto. I could have the site have a Google Maps thingy that shows me where it was most recently spotted and when.
This doesn't even require the GPS card -- any information you can have the device update you with is useful. It could tell me what the person was last looking at, what pages they're frequenting, etc. Get their name from their MySpace page and have the police show up at their door. Letting mobile devices act as servers opens up a lot of these possibilities, including making them easy to use as James-Bond-type spy/bug gadgets and taking a big step in the direction of useful remote presence.
Of course, wherethehellismylaptop.com would require a very secure login if you want any privacy, ever.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
I don't know, I see real ugliness coming from this. What if Paris drops off the front page again? The last time she had to wait for some dweeb(who I think she paid) to hack her phone. Now she will set up a spam server to sell pictures of herself in compromising positions, or worse yet copies of her latest single. This is one technology whose time is never.
3G, Wifi.
Bot Assisted Blogging
This sort of technology could be perhaps useful for administration of your mobile phone through a web based interface on your PC. The possibilities for that could be rather interesting if not fun, especially if your phone got stolen.
Other more practical uses could include number and text message management, calanders and reminders could all be set from your pc with having to set up a bluetooth connection or plug it in... Ok I admit I am reaching here a little but I have a feeling that claiming uselessness on this is more a lack of imagination than anything.
I suspect it isnt about using your phone as a server as such but offering you the ability to connect into it, perhaps to send text messages from any pc you happen to be sitting at. It does create a rather large possibility for abuse, but what new(ish) technology doesnt? I suggest not writing it off straight away even if it does seem a little bit perverse. I dont know, getting a new message on my phone and being able to check it in a google mail style interface on my pc without even rummaging around in my pocket, reply and then continue reading slashdot seems interesting to me. And i dont even have to use that crappy predicitive text.
That will become useful about the same time it becomes handy to bring a server rack in your pocket as a cell phone.
...of having your cell phone hacked and used to distribute porn, warez, and pirated music, right from the web server they installed in your pocket. Am I the only one that sees this not as a good thing? Why does Nokia want to put a web server in your pocket? The whole point of a consumer electronics device, like a cell phone, is to make it bullet proof to security issues (or at least as bullet proof as possible), and have it work every time you turn it on.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for embedded Linux on these things from a business and consumer viewpoint, but come on! The more you open your sensitive personal data up for attack, the greater the risk. This doesn't make any sense to me.
What about a way to access and manage your phone from your computer without installing any additional software, since every computer already has a web browser?
I made a J2ME http server a year ago.. just to test if it worked.
It can't do much though, only show one page with some info on the phone.
http://hem.bredband.net/abe2000/j2me-httpd/
The Nokia 6600 has had the capability to run a web server for years.
Internet Connection + Programable OS = Potential for Web Server
It won't be long before we see watches and refridgerators with web servers, too.
Sorry...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Imagine someone pingflooding your mobile's IP address, and you paid for data packet traffic by the kilobyte!
Well, I don't know about pingflooding, but I've been bitten by text messages. As far as I know, you pay for incoming text messages, not outgoing. And AOL did send me a text message advertising AIM on my cell phone. Well, I don't use text messages at all, but that in particular pissed me off. I don't care how cheap it was, paying for incoming spam is a broken business model, especially considering AOL probably has a deal with them.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Given how much data transfer costs through phones a webserver would be too expensive to be worthwhile. Even Wifi isn't cheap though most services here.
First I'd like Verizon to let me use my FiOS connection as a web server, then I'll worry about having one on my cellphone.
Obviously, web hosting for those who need to be discrete and relatively difficult to locate.
Next....
I do not want (nor will I think my telco tolerate for long without squizing me for serious money) to have 100s, 1000s, + of external users sucking up connection bandwidth to my phone.
However if my phone had a web interface for connection to my PC that made configuration and data transfer easier, OR if I could limit my webphone to a few key users OR if my phone server was actually proxied by servers at the telco, this might make sense.
I think that it could be very usefull. I could copy some files onto my PPC phone using my SD, then have a download link using my 802.11 that is built in. I could have a Fre busy indicator that i could change its status as I walked around the office. One could even put in postioning using what BT network it detects. Imagine this, I copy an my fav music on my phone, i walk over to my friends house and join his network and he plays my latest music with out ever having to trust his computer with my SD. I then walk to work and it can be accessed teling my coworkers where I am by simply typing rspery in their browsers. then i could copy my program over and steal the partial cents from my companies clients. like any tech, it can be good and it also can be realy bad realy fast Now i just ned to find a spil prof keyboard...
It could be great for engineers like me that deploy a lot of short-term and long-term measurement systems (noise/vibration/temperature/wind speed/etc) and want to make the data available in real-time to interested parties (e.g. a local community).
Currently, the only way to disseminate this info is:
I would love to just be able to hook up a cellphone to the data logging unit, and just point people to www.city-noise-monitoring.org/site1. Yeah I know, niche application.
The only issues I see:
I for one will be watching out for this.
so can we have it the other way around too please?r ear)set"
a "super dumb" cellphone that does everything over a
server, including storage phone book entries to makeing
and taking calls etc.
i think this "minimal-near-to-the-smarts-of-a-bluetooth-head(o
could be made tiny.
in a nutshell export everything to a server (a homecomputer),
with just the basic electronics needed to connect to the celltower
to the "brains" at home (obviously it needs a microphone
and speaker tho).
a mini mobile phone please!!! > think communicator on star trek.
As many have pointed out, there are power and bandwidth issues around this idea. Not everything that CAN be done is worth doing. This seems like one that isn't worth doing. There was a tiny (less than 256 bytes of code, as I recall!) web server done at least 5 years ago on something like a PIC controller at U of Mass (?). So this doesn't seem very impressive.
What's the advantage to having a web server where there's uncertain connectivity, limited resources generally, and high communication costs?
More interesting would be a stationary web server and an interesting way of updating information on it from the mobile unit while conserving bandwidth and minimizing the effects of intermittent connectivity. So, perhaps I could clip the phone to my shirt pocket and have it send back to the server a photo every 5 minutes. (Of course, if noone ever visits the web site, a solution like this will use MORE power than the server on the phone, if noone ever connects to it...)
or are you just glad to see me?
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
While the uses can't be really discussed as we are just getting around to actually using mobiles in an sense. But, think of this as mobility driven rather than purely mobile. It's personal rather than household driven, meaning that it is your server, not the families. And, imagine that while it may use WiMax on the road, it uses your household service at home.
It's more like a pertable hub than a device. My thoughts on where mobile devices are going is more about a mobile access points with other linked devices, rather than as a mobile phone that does everything. The Nokia 770 really clued me in to this.
This is the usefulness:
From TFA:
Access core data
* Access favorites, contacts, calendar, logs, and messages
* Download images
That means your phone can do unattended data transfers to other phones. Just be careful not to unintentionally expose your MP3s, because the **AA would have to considerably staff up their anti-file-sharing efforts if billions of mobile handset users were able to serve files to any user with a Web browser.
I wrote parts of this stuff
I think I am getting thousand of "GET /msadc/..%c1%9f../..%c1%9f../..%c1%9f../winnt/syst em32/cmd.exe?/c+dir" or the similar everyday?
I've been looking around for a replacement for my kyocera 7130 palm phone, but I haven't found anything that
- runs linux
- is available in the US
- is open to being programmed & hacked.
- touchscreen would be nice.
Does anyone know of a device like this? Sure having a linux webserver for phones is great (I guess), but what do I run it on?
I got warez in my pocket. :D
Hidden webserver?
I feel it's nuts.
If you think grammar is unimportant, just think what the absence of an apostrophe would do to the above sentence.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Exposing the web browser to the Internet, however, seems much less useful. If I want to put things on the Internet, I have a web server with 50GB/month transfer (contrast with the 40MB/month I get bundled with my contract). If I create content with my 'phone and want to publish it on the web, it makes a lot more sense to have it upload the data (once) to my real server and have people use that. It's faster, too.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
However,
Which makes me ask, "In that case, why the hell would I want it?"Just think of the possibilities of having a webserver in your pocket!
should have been:
Just think of the security issues of having a webserver in your pocket!
The real benefit of a mesh server is it would connect directly from one cell phone to another and so on creating an instant land line and hence free network. if cellphones are capable of broadcasting at frequencies other cell phones can receive on it is a hardware possibility. it would do several things. form an internet backbone immediately almost anywhere there are cellphones. be a good emergency back up system. be a less censorable system. be a more private system since whoever couldn't spy on you easily by tapping into the main backbones. be free excluding cellphone charges. I proposed computer interfaces/"modems" for a similiar emergency shortwave and FRS (family radio service- the 5 mile range walkie talkies you can get at target and walmart etc.) radio mesh network which is being worked on which would ideally be able to utilize existing radios already out there by creating a radio to computer interface.
GeoPilot
www.globalboiling.com www.globalboiling.com
The *real* quesiton is: will they come with a special version of T9 text entry for editting httpd.conf?
I suspect the point of putting a webserver on the phone is not to do the usual web-hosting stuff, but to provide a simple control interface for the phone from connected devices (or even the phone itself.)
Active web pages provide a FANTASTICALLY easy way to construct elaborate user interfaces that are compatible with a wide variety of broswing hardware/software combinations.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The way I understand it, these cell phones don't exactly have very fast hardware or a very fast internet connection. Wouldn't this cause any web server you try to run off of a cell phone to become nearly overloaded after about maybe 5 people connect to it?
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
So does this mean if you have cargo pants on you could be a walking server farm?
that you didnt call because you got slashdotted. Your wife knows what that means, no?
There is some use of web server on the mobile device.
You can communicate that way between J2ME and C++ application residing on the phone. The C++ app is the server, and the Millet opens a connection to localhost.
You may ask why to do that?
First to have communication between applications, because there is actually no standard how J2ME applications could communicate with other applications on the phone.
Second, some APIs are exposed only for C++ and not for J2ME. Having a simple web server you can get java programs to use the api as well.
I don't know are they any real applications that use such communication, but the proof-of-concept program is known for years.
What about outomatic clustering, akin to Meshnetworks with wifi? Couldn't this give rise to new forms of traffic load sharing? There's so many phones out there! More than surfing surfers possibly?
Just a thought.
Because you can - or because you should?
I was going to post exactly that. It's not such an odd thing, either; I have a friend who used to work for a defense contractor, and what you do to check status on F-18 jets is plug in a crossover cable and fire up a browser. If it works for home routers and fighter jets, it should work for cell-phones, right?
Like?
You just got troll'd!
beats the hell out of trying to talk on one.
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
In other words, it's not for hosting content on a cell, it's for providing a web-based user interface for applications that run on a cell.
Ummm. No need for birth control, with all that constant radiation near the cumputer and other important bits?
Become A Real Millionaire, in 10 seconds, on your computer! (rf=really fast) Read manual, YMMV.
rm -rf *
You are a sad, strange little man. Don't get me wrong, the government needs people like you to think these things up. Ever consider working for DARPA?
It's a shame that everyone instantly thinks about running full blown websites on a cellphone when reading this article.
This technology has many uses:
- Having a free/busy schedule accessible to others.
- Publishing a business card.
- Publishing location information.
- Publishing a general description about yourself.
- Publishing a form so people can send text messages to you directly.
- Instant messaging.
Imagine this: Someone would just have to enter your phone number in his phone, the phone automatically retrieves your complete contact information from your mobile webserver and adds you to their contact list. And, as a plus, they will never forget your birthday because it's automatically added.
In terms of bandwidth costs, this application is very cheap since it would only cost about 400 bytes for the above example.
Also the webserver wouldn't get too much hits, since only people who know you will be downloading this information, and limits could be set to prevent huge IP traffic.
At this time, the major roadblocks are:
- Lack of a dedicated IP address. (We need to wait for IPv6 to become mainstream)
- Cell phone number to IPv6 translation.
they're trying to find ways to use the .mobi domain (which by the way for me is useless.)
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
I have a smallish website that i've had running on a pda for quite some time (currently off line as the pda is doing gps duty)
why stick a website on a pda?
For a low traffic site (but with upto 1 gig of files availabe) the pda sits drawing about 10 watts an hour max silently
I could run a pc as a webserver with its continually running fan and considerably larger power drain but why when it's a site of little interest to more than a few friends.
on the otherhand unless you have essentially free data transfer (which i have with wireless) on a cell phone its not much use at all.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
If you want to take what Nokia have done a step further check out www.Savaje.com
It is a brand new mobile phone OS in competition with Symbian, Palm and Windows Mobile.
The entire OS is J2SE (not the normal mobile phone cut down version of java that the rest are running).
They just launched the first handset a few weeks ago at javaOne and you should have seen the Sun guys raving about it.
Is anyone else on Slashdot aware of this yet?
Dean
All of the uses you list are possible with convential non-webserver-running phones....
Free/busy schedule -- let it run on an external server (perhaps even to show which members in a company group/team are away/busy at once).
business card --? Its called a website, no phone required.
Location information? Again, this is easily handled by an external webserver. The phone only needs to transmit its location, not a graphical JPG image of a map showing where it is. (Ham Radio operators have been doing this kind of tracking for a very long time -- APRS).
General Description about self --- again, its called a WEBSITE.
Form so people can send text messages to you directly? ALREADY HAPPENING -- have you looked at any cell provider's website lately? This is already there.
Instant messaging -- ALREADY there.. Centralized webserver keeps track of who is online, who isn't.
And for your "imagine this" scenario? running the webserver on the phone provides no advantage. (The phone's contact list *could* (and easily should) be integrated with an external server.... There are standardized extensions in Java for cell phone Java apps to access the phone's list of names/numbers (and other extensions for making wireless internet connections). So basically, your scenario is already possible with current technology (w/o breaking the TOS).
Also the webserver wouldn't get too much hits, since only people who know you will be downloading this information
Ah, you've obviously never looked at logs on a webserver or heard of search engines... As for my own personal website (that I do host/run myself), it is highly rare for someone I do know to visit the page... Most visitors are not human.
If all cellphones at an internet IP address and a webserver hosting one's personal contact info, you would have to take out a 2nd mortage on your home just to pay the next phone bill (bots, spamers, etc).
Running a webserver on a phone just makes no sense, unless you want to make it something like a "USB stick with wireless web server". But the vast majority has no use for such things and the minority would actually rarely use it (despite much salivating to the contrary).
Why do i run my own webserver? Simple, I don't want the advertisments that free websites usually have. I will never run a webserver on my phone.
So Mr. LinuxDon, I hope you are full, because I just fed a Troll.
Yeah. Put my whole filesharing website in my pocket and let the RIAA just try and catch me.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
crammed into 1 square inch at 288 dpi
Oh come on, like there are any phones with 288x288 px screens.
Which is a huge overkill if you just want to let people know you are not availiable on mondays for example!
Also, how can someone find that information without receiving the exact URL from you? So, I've actually have to use google to find your website when I merely have your phone number. Then I will have to download the vcard file from you website which most people don't have and then I have to transfer it to my phone by bluetooth.
Also, setting up such a full bloated website takes you a day to create it since it's just an overkill for the particular purpose I was talking about. All in all, it's not nearly as usefull as the integrated solution I was talking about. This sentence makes clear that you are also seeing the mobile webserver as a replacement for your current server, which makes no sense as you have already stated.
Also, you are talking about push technology while running the webserver directly on the phone is about pull technology which introduces new possibilities.
All in all I think your point is pretty weak and a Troll.
Personally, I'm not sure I like the idea of random strangers google-ing my pocket server.
Now if the picture phone were hanging outside the pocket, you can have cool apps
like instant "see-what-I-see" in my travels.
... Or are you just happy to see me.
Hint: it's not for hosting a web site.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Imagine then connecting every one of those computers (cell phones) that are floating around in our pockets with some beautifully written communal software. Mob super computers....people will come together to solve mathematical problems. The third world, without ever building the infrastructure of Manhattan will have the opportunity to equal all the tasks of the largest IBM monster these days. Just gather and speak and let your cell phones do the work.
Every cell phone will always be on and always be thinking...we will all donate our spare minutes to searching for aliens, or folding proteins or whatever it is that day that interests the populace. Eventually we will sell our processing time to large groups of people who decide where to apply our processing time based upon the amounts of money the corporations are willing to pay us...as it is they who will need our computing power (this is after the major pieces of the corporation dissolve away to leave nothing but random people across a globe strung together by radio electromagnetic waves of some sort...I digress...).
Yeah...things like this are interesting. A new concept which, even though it is almost obvious to see it after you are shown it, you become instantly enthralled by another avenue of potentials that arise.
Mad, adj : Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence. Ambrose Bierce - The Deveil's Dictionsary
Nope, not an oxymoron on this occasion.
Microsoft Research put a web server on a mobile phone several years ago, back when I still worked for them.
A cow-orker (or should that be core-searcher? named Kai Rannenburg did the dirty deed. Kai left MSR shortly before I did. Chase down to Kai's exp-rojects at http://research.microsoft.com/security/ for more information.
Paul
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
Just think of the possibilities of having a webserver in your pocket!"
No, I'm just happy to see you.
Using Apache with authentication would allow for the monitoring of your kids/partner. With built-in GPS to capture the users location, a scripting language could display this location on the resulting web page. This could also be used to monitor employees, and hackers could possibly monitor their victims. A link to your favourite web mapping software like Google Earth could easily show you where the user is in the world.
A simple script in the office or at home could periodically request this page and you would never again loose your phone.
Another use could be to look at your mobile's phone book when you have left the phone in the car or at work.
I do wonder if these web servers that respond with something like "Apache - running on Nokia 6630..." will attract a lot of DOS attacks - not to slow the mobile but to push your GPRS traffic up until your credit limit is reached, and the mobile will stop making calls!
Port Apache to the Sybian OS first, then set your cellphone to vibrate whenever someone hits the webpage, and let the good times roll!!!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.