Nokia puts web server on a mobile phone - the Pocket Blog is born
Mobile phones have longed to be full members of the Internet ever since the advent of WAP. As the computing horsepower, memory, display capabilities and browser software of mobile phones has improved, so has the browsing experience for users. But mobile phones have always been web clients: that is, the mobile user always requests information from the Internet. You can never serve it directly form your mobile phone.
All that’s about to change, though, as Nokia’s latest research project has developed a full fledged web server for a mobile phone. Not just any web server, either: they’ve ported Apache, the web’s most popular web server, onto their Series 60 phones. They’ve also implemented a custom gateway to circumvent operators’ firewalls, so anyone across the web can access the phone’s web content as if it were a traditional web server.
Geeks amongst you will be hanging your tongues out with drooling anticipation. Read on to see what exactly you can do with a web server on a mobile phone.
[Source: Nokia]
A Mobile Phone Web Server
Nokia give some examples of what you can do with a mobile phone web server:
“As a mobile phone contains quite a lot of personal data it is straightforward to semi-automatically generate a personal home page. And contrary to websites in general, a website on a mobile phone always has its “administrator” nearby and he or she can even participate in the content generation. For instance, we have created a web-application that prompts the phone owner to take a picture, which subsequently is returned as a JPG. That is, on a personal device the website can be interactive…For instance, if you browse to a mobile website and ask the “administrator” to take a picture, the image you get depends upon the location of the website.”
Nokia and the Pocket Blog
What they’re thinking of is more than just moblogging (whereby you take a picture on your mobile phone and update your blog by emailing the picture to your static web server). They’re thinking more of a Pocket Blog, instantly updated without you having to post a thing. Better still, your readers can send you a text, saying “take a picture of that”, “what’s over there?”, or “who’s that next to you?”
If you’re not already freaking out, imagine taking a picture of your friends at a party and suddenly getting a text from a complete stranger, saying “she’s nice - get her number for me would you?!” Of course, this would only happen if you’d written an app that automatically took your picture and placed it on your mobile blog (as well as publishing your mobile phone number). But why not? Nokia have also ported Python onto their Series 60 phones as part of the research, so writing web server apps is a snip.
You could provide live as-it-happens coverage of important events, be it a concert, football match, gadget trade-fair (CES anyone?), or any other news coverage. Amateur journalists can easily beat the professionals at their own game, just by being in the right place at the right time (or wrong time, depending on the event!)
Hook your Pocket Blog up to AdSense, or some other blog advertising, and the more impressive your pictures, the more traffic you’ll get, and thus the more you’ll earn. A much better way of paying for your gap year travels than working in a bar somewhere!
This is brand new technology, and of course needs a lot more work on it (not to mention widespread adoption) for these scenarios to be realized. But they’re all possible, and this is only the start. The Pocket Blog - nice idea, Nokia!
Post your comments if you can think of any more ideas.
