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?"

Have GPS?

[RingDev]

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

Two words

[EngrBohn]

Portable webcam

Re:Have GPS?

[oliana]

Or if, when the server got pinged, it rang. So when you lose your cell-phone in your house and don't have a land-line to call it to find it, you can ping it from your computer.

A few possibilities...

[Roy-Svork]

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!

Out pacing the average citizen's ability

[catahoula10]

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.

Re:Have GPS?

[X0563511]

Er, run a packet sniffer on the world-facing interface outside your firewall and watch how often random pings from the internet pass by.

Maybe better would be a simple website with a small (5 letter) text field. Enter the right code, and it would ring.

I have spotted phising sites using this

[Anonymous Coward]

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.