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When Cellphones Become Webservers 189

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!"
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When Cellphones Become Webservers

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  • by yagu ( 721525 ) * <`yayagu' `at' `gmail.com'> on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:20AM (#15461469) Journal

    I won't be satisfied until Adobe ports Photoshop to cell phones. Now we're talking.

    • Re:not good enough (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Marty200 ( 170963 )
      The only usefull application for this would be to have the website tell you it's physical location. I'd love to be able to log in in the morning and have an easy way to find my phone.

      MG
      • Re:not good enough (Score:2, Interesting)

        by zenslug ( 542549 ) *
        I can think of another useful application extending the location idea: localized web radio

        Driving/walking along, decide you are bored of the songs on your phone, turn to local web radio and listen to some else's songs. Something like that obviously wouldn't need to be restricted to a location, but that would make it managable (resource-wise) for the owner of the phone/server, and I think it would add an element of fun, too.

        Also, aside from music, you could do even more light-weight journalism. Stream audio
  • by MrShaggy ( 683273 ) <chris.andersonNO@SPAMhush.com> on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:21AM (#15461475) Journal
    Vibrating cell-phones that vibrate based on hits to the server!
  • Hell, there is webserver software for the Commodore 64 [www.sics.se]. Why not a Cell Phone?
  • Yes, but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by deltagreen ( 522610 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:22AM (#15461478) Homepage
    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!
  • by dtldl ( 644451 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:23AM (#15461484)
    Is that a web server in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
  • by Flimzy ( 657419 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:23AM (#15461488)
    If these new web-server mobile phones work like my current phone, then whenever I'm "online" I can't also make phone calls. That would make a mobile web server about as useful as a web server on my old dialup connection.

    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.

    • Depends on the way the phone works. I know that the recently released can use it's WLAN (Wifi), Bluetooth, IR and USB connections at the same time, but I don't know if you can connect to GSM at the same time.
    • Well, perhaps in the future you'll be able to run skype on your mobile and use it for phone calls.
    • Two acronyms. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Fizzl ( 209397 )
      3G, Wifi.
    • My phone is online 24x7. It has a constant GPRS-connection to the network, so it can receive email sent to me. And I can make phone-calls just fine. I can even make and receive phone-calls when I'm surfing the net with the phone.

      Symbian is a multitasking OS, so having a webserver there is not an issue. And GPRS and the like do not prevent you from making phone-calls.
      • This is not quite true. The GPRS connection is suspended while you are making a voice call (use a hands-free set and try browsing while talking, if you don't believe me), and is resumed when you hang up. For a client, this is fine; you are unlikely to be browsing while talking (irritating for me though, since I was having a conversation over IM on my computer using my 'phone via bluetooth for the Internet connection when I received a call). For a server, it would just mean random downtime.

        Quite why th

    • The way older phones work is by actually creating a dial up modem connection to get their Internet connection. That's why you can't make calls with them. Phones that can use GPRS, EDGE, etc. open a second connection to access the Internet instead, so they can still make and receive calls while connected.

    • 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.
  • by xao gypsie ( 641755 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:24AM (#15461491)
    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.....
  • Luckily (Score:5, Funny)

    by LandownEyes ( 838725 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:25AM (#15461495)
    At least now when the police raid your torrent server, everyone can call and tell them they're pissed.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    "Just think of the possibilities of having a webserver in your pocket!"

    None!
  • by neuro.slug ( 628600 ) <neuro__.hotmail@com> on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:31AM (#15461519)
    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!
  • Security (Score:2, Insightful)

    by babanada ( 977344 )
    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
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:36AM (#15461540)
    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.
  • by castoridae ( 453809 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:36AM (#15461542)
    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.
  • Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by metamatic ( 202216 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:37AM (#15461545) Homepage Journal
    Just think of the possibilities of having a webserver in your pocket!


    The possibility of paying massive bandwidth fees to Cingular, for example.

    • by itomato ( 91092 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @02:16PM (#15462534)
      Verizon's BroadbandAccess Package: $59.99 monthly access w/ 2-yr customer agreement and qualifying voice plan, two-year Customer Agreement, $25 activation fee per line.

      However,

      Unlimited NationalAccess/BroadbandAccess services cannot be used (1) for uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games, (2) with server devices or with host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, Voice over IP (VoIP), automated machine-to-machine connections, or peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, or (3) as a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections.
      Which makes me ask, "In that case, why the hell would I want it?"
      • I came across this discussion during meta-mod, and wanted to follow up. I had this service for about two months before they terminated my account. The termination letter said my monthly usage of 10GB was "40x over the average user" and they were closing my account immediately. So they expect you to pay $60/month for about 256MB/month usage. My recommendation is to stay away from this service.

  • 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.
    • The Nextel phones with the "walkie-talkie" system will switch to peer-to-peer when out of range from a tower. This is why they are extremly popular with companies as a group can be out on the field and maintain communication. Apparently the some of their phones will work for several miles this way.
  • by LEX LETHAL ( 859141 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:42AM (#15461568)
    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.
    • While I like the idea of putting every cycle to use, I imagine the phones are slow enough that processing any signifigant data units would be too bothersome to consider. Perhaps doing FFTs on one of the newer phones with 3d chips, but even then that's a stretch.
  • by pla ( 258480 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:44AM (#15461576) Journal
    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.
    • by Pink Tinkletini ( 978889 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:57AM (#15461646) Homepage
      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.
    • Web applications. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Shazow ( 263582 ) <andrey.petrov@noSpAm.shazow.net> on Saturday June 03, 2006 @11:09AM (#15461689) Homepage
      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
    • WTF?!?

      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 o
    • by Reverberant ( 303566 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @12:12PM (#15461983) Homepage
      But an actual web server?

      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:

      • manually download the info every X days and stick it on a "real" webserver (time consuming, possibly impractical depending on location, weather, etc)
      • hook up a laptop with a cellmodem to the unit (expensive, power hungry), and
      • hook up a land line (very expensive).

      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:

      1. can I interface my unit to the phone using serial or bluetooth? and
      2. will the cell phone companies have a reasonable data-rate plan?

      I for one will be watching out for this.

      • - hook up a laptop with a cellmodem to the unit (expensive, power hungry)

        Why are the current options (especially this one) more expensive than a cellphone web server?

        What about sending the original real-time data per GPRS to a real apache where it is served for the rest of the world?
      • I don't think this rationalizes traffic going directly to your cell phone. Even if cell phones had terrific bandwith and rock-solid connectivity (which they certainly do not yet have), there's still more convincing arguments to just publish your phone's content to a more traditional server. One is in your pocket, running on battery power, and relying on wireless service. One is sitting in a building, plugged into the wall for power and network, and has IT personnel ready to fix it.
      • While telemetry packages are available from the cell providers now to send back data to a server, there are applications where the need for a server complicates matters.

        Having a built-in webserver is a lot like just having a personal web server on your pc-- sans pc.

        It's great for grassroots or short-life projects. It's also a way for Nokia to sell more phones and the carriers to move more data...
    • by simpl3x ( 238301 )
      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 dev
    • 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 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 (w
  • OK (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:45AM (#15461582) Homepage
    Just think of the possibilities of having a webserver in your pocket!

    Ok, hmmm, let me think ... uh, no. Aaand not that. Hmmmm....

    *chirp* *chirp* *chirp*

    OK, you got me - what are those possiblities?
    • Re:OK (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Ok, hmmm, let me think ... uh, no. Aaand not that. Hmmmm.... *chirp* *chirp* *chirp*

      You know, if you could round up those crickets in your head and get them back into the running wheel you might be able to think of something. Like easy configuration of your phone. Easy access to your photos and files and contacts, accessible from whatever computer happens to be nearby.

      A standard interface. It's obviously not meant for hosting a website, like the 187 other clowns-with-escaped-crickets posting above me s

  • Not much use.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tsvk ( 624784 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:46AM (#15461583)

    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.

    • Oh, wow... should have read TFA... :) There was a mention of gateways, enabling connections to be made from the internet to the mobiles.

    • 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
  • Already done in 1999 with an Apple Message Pad and a cell modem.

    http://www.wirednews.com/wired/archive/7.03/street cred.html?pg=10 [wirednews.com]
  • by Anonymous Coward
    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
    • The current version works over bluetooth. This seems useful to me; it allows me to share things that other people can see if they are physically close to me. I might consider putting up a personal homepage with a copy of my vCard, for example. A simple script could scrape vCards from everyone I walk near, and save them.

      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

  • 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?
  • Why port Apache? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FooAtWFU ( 699187 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:59AM (#15461654) Homepage
    I mean, why not just port Lighttpd? It's smaller!
  • 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
  • by FooAtWFU ( 699187 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @11:04AM (#15461672) Homepage
    I've used a webserver on a phone before... it was actually more of a phone/PDA (Seimens SX66). It was for demonstration purposes- we had some stuff there running on the NetFront multimodal browser, and the pages were being served up using an IBM Java-based setup, WCTME (Websphere Client Technology Micro Edition).

    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...

  • by Council ( 514577 ) <rmunroe@gm a i l.com> on Saturday June 03, 2006 @11:18AM (#15461720) Homepage
    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 [nniling.us], 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.
  • That will become useful about the same time it becomes handy to bring a server rack in your pocket as a cell phone.
  • 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.
  • What's the point? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by sotweed ( 118223 )
    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
  • 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?
  • Just think of the possibilities of having a webserver in your pocket!

    Like?

  • they're trying to find ways to use the .mobi domain (which by the way for me is useless.)
  • by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @12:35AM (#15464829)
    Just think of the possibilities of having a webserver in your pocket!

    Yeah. Put my whole filesharing website in my pocket and let the RIAA just try and catch me.

  • Hint: it's not for hosting a web site.
  • 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/ [microsoft.com] for more information.

    Paul

  • Port Apache to the Sybian [sybian.com] OS first, then set your cellphone to vibrate whenever someone hits the webpage, and let the good times roll!!!

Hackers of the world, unite!

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