The Spatial Miscellany

Another rainy weekend proved a good excuse to sit down and put some theory into practice…

The theory goes…take a GPS enabled mobile phone; some beta software from Nokia; a handful of HTML, Javascript and PHP goodness; and you have all the components for a dynamic tracking web service and mapping website?

Well, the theory works! I’ve put a demonstration together at the following link:

Mobile Phone Tracking with a Nokia N95 Demonstration

Given all the current hype regarding some telecomunications technology; I’m puzzled by the apparent lack of interest in the mobile web server. Sure, there are a few pieces to still fall into place, but if the mobile web server’s graduation from Nokia research labs, results in widespread deployment, it must have a profound impact on the web?

…the Power Of Information taskforce is asking that question; and is prepared to stump up £20,000 to take your idea to the next level! The reasoning behind the competition is to get an understanding of the data and information the government needs to share to move things forward. To get the competition underway they’ve just released some new government datasets; for example, a list of all 22,000 schools.

Their website to harvest ideas (showusabetterway.co.uk) has been up for just over a day and seems to be getting a terrific response, I ran the ideas to date through Wordle to get a flavour of the requests being made, here are the results:

Congratulations to the POI taskforce; it’s a great step forward for the Free Our Data campaign. So if you’ve got ideas, get over there and jot them down. I’ve thrown my hat in the ring with the suggestion of a Road Works API…

This post builds on a previous post from earlier in the week, when I gave mention to some Nokia\Apache software that runs as a mobile web server on my mobile phone (a Nokia N95). The first thing that jumped out was the architecture of the software, ‘software above the level of a single device’ as coined by Tim O’Reilly. Then Phil jumped in with a comment agreeing with O’Reilly that such software has the potential to simplify the user interface of devices with small screens, but there is more to this software. A Google blog search revealed Ricky Cadden asking the same question…”I think there’s some serious potential here [MWS], though I can’t quite put my finger on it”.

Here is one reason I think it’s a real game changer - it completely removes the necessity of a network operator?

The likes of Skype and Gizmo already threaten the network operators’ phone call revenues, with VOIP based services; the mobile web server goes further. Let’s assume all mobile phones run with a mobile web server and have access to a wireless internet connection. Now write a one sentence webpage and host it on your mobile web server; restrict permission to view that web page to your best pal; make a request against a web service, running on your friend’s mobile web server, that alerts them of the new page you’ve created; and essentially you’ve just sent a text message - but without the network operator.

Moreover, replacement of the 160 character text message is only the beginning, this is revolutionary technology and a whole host of innovative applications can be expected to follow. What form might they take?

If we do move to a situation where the world’s 3 billion mobile devices ship configured as web servers, it would represent at least a doubling in the size of the internet (if there is a suitable metric by which to make such a measurement). What is more, if recent trends continue, and phones are equipped with GPS, these new web servers will be location aware and mobile.

There will be a live webcast of the Geospatial Web Services workshop held at the University of Nottingham today:

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/geography/geowebservices/

A couple of weeks back I surfed over to the Nokia website to check out the latest developments for their Series60 device platform (S60); unsuspecting I stumbled upon some software that really got me thinking.

It turns out, a couple of years back Nokia embarked on a project to port the Apache web server to the symbian operating system that underpins their Series60 device platform. The project was subsequently handed over to the open source community and you can get involved here, project raccoon. Interestingly, Nokia have recently wrapped the web server as user friendly software with a supporting website: www.mymobilesite.net.

I installed the application on my N95 and as you might expect it provides complete access to the contents of my mobile phone via the web. I can fire up the web browser on my desktop PC and browse to a web page, and then click a button on the web page to take a photo with the camera on my phone, wherever my phone might be. I can then use my desktop web browser to browse the photos I have taken, or any other information I have on my phone e.g. contact details or calendar events.

This struck me as a unique piece of software, I tried to think of other software that functioned in a similar manner. After roaming the web for some ideas I found an article from Tim O’Reilly that suggested similar behaviour could be observed with Apple iTunes, he’s coined a term to describe such software as…‘software above the level of a single device’.

Installing the mobile web server software on your phone, allows you to use the software on any number of devices…your phone; a desktop client with web browser; a games console; or any other internet enabled device, even someone else’s mobile phone? Software above the level of a single device - just as Tim O’Reilly describes when he observers that you can control your iPod from an iMac.

From a geospatial perspective, couple the GPS enabled N95 mobile phone, with the mobile web server, and we have a tracking service that can be consumed by any internet enabled device, powerful stuff. Perhaps worthy of more consideration, I look across the GI industry, GIS software vendors, the open source community, and other corners, but I don’t see ‘GIS software above the level of a single device’ as an overriding design architecture?

There is a bigger question here…what happens when 3 billion mobile phones run as personal web servers?