With the aim of helping children learn maths and computing, a few years back some very bright people at MIT set about building a visual programming language called Scratch. Instead of writing lines of code, you arrange lego blocks that represent events, actions and logic. For those working in the GIS space think FME or Model Builder. Google have now taken this work, and built upon it, with ‘App Inventor’. Drag and drop building blocks, from within your web browser, to build an application for your Android mobile phone – the web development environment even includes an emulator. Sounds good, but does it really work?

In short – Yes. It’s a beta service and you can only deploy to phones connected to your PC (no Android market place distribution yet). It’s a Google beta, which means comprehensive, robust, and well supported. Everything I need for my mobile apps, is already there, location awareness, read-write-web, rich user forms, local storage and graphics.

It’s remarkable that mobile phone applications can now be developed within hours. I hope Google continue to grow this initiative, and can only recommend you try it.

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?

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.

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?

March 2007 saw the release on the GPS enabled Nokia N95, assisted GPS followed shortly after. August saw a national campaign from Vodafone advertising location based services from UK property website Rightmove, and traffic updates from the AA. If in any doubt of the impact LBS would have on the mobile industry in 2007, October saw Nokia stump up $8 billion for mapping data provider Navteq; and only last week, news broke of a location enabled Apple iPhone.

The 2008 report strikes a more bearish note for LBS, at least with regards to GPS enabled mobile phones. Deloitte acknowledge that the convergence of successful technologies in their own right, doesn’t always add value to the converged device…just because we can GPS enable mobile phones, does it add value?

I have sympathy with this view point, and recall with anxiety, last weeks news from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) of the MP3 enabled Stun Gun:

The 2008 Deloitte report can be found here: Deloitte Telecommunications Predictions 2008.

Do we need a European Global Navigation Satellite System?

Galileo seems to have hit the rocks after the funding model for the project showed its true colours. In some sort of magic third way PPP\PFI buy-now, pay later scheme – so in vogue at the moment – it was initially envisaged that the private sector would contribute to somewhere near a third of the costs for such a system. For me, there are two chief reasons why I believe expecting a contribution from the private sector to fund this thing is pie in the sky…

First up, the Americans have developed GPS and provide free access for all, so rather crudely speaking, the argument goes “why sell Pepsi, when you can have coke for free?” – GPS is here, it works well, and it’s free.

Ok, so some say Galileo will be better, and I’m sure this is possible; but still, do we really expect business to pay for this upfront? To my mind this is the stuff of fantasy, business works for today and so often heavily discounts the future; for example, consider the following two statements:

“Today Google has joined forces with Salesforce.com to sell content based advertising”

“Google has invested $1billion in Galileo, the European Sat Nav system. On the back of this investment, it’s estimated that sales in location based advertising will quadruple, at some point after 2014 when Galileo will go live.”

Which statement will move the share price? The first! And it’s for this reason that it’s naive to expect the private sector to stump up money to fund Galileo, since any returns won’t materialise for a long, long time.

The debate is well worth a read; and now I’m going to try something new…a poll. For sure, it’s a little naff, but anyhow…if you’re one of my regular three readers…go on, vote

So if we accept that the private sector won’t invest cash up front…


Note: There is a poll within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

Over the weekend I read an article from the Technology, Media and Telecommunications group at Deloitte that was published last month and discusses some of their predictions for 2007.

Supporters of net neutrality, suggest the proposed plans for prioritising some web traffic, over other web traffic, has little to do with covering the cost of maintaining the network, it’s just a guise for the telephone companies (Telco’s) to grab a bigger slice of the pie – currently being eaten predominately by Google (and one or two other online companies). Telco’s, both wired and wireless, are under pressure to deliver increased returns to shareholders; with this in mind Deloitte consider some killer applications that could help them do this, and for mobile operators in 2007 that could mean delivering on the hype of ‘Presence Based Services’.

The report is well worth a read, some random points I found interesting are bulleted below:

• The volume of traffic flowing over the World’s largest Internet hub in Amsterdam, which caries 20% of all of Europe’s Internet traffic, grew at a compound monthly average of 7.4% in 2006.




• Daily traffic at the exchange exceeded one petabyte in Feb 2007, it’s expected the exceed two petabytes per day by Oct 2007.




• In 2002 adult internet penetration in the USA hit 60%, it was another 4 years before it clocked 70%.




• The PC is acting as a bottle neck to the internet, as there is usually only one per house, members of the household are prevented from accessing the internet at the same time. This should spawn the development of other lower cost devices that provide access to the Internet at the same time as the PC (e.g. radio’s & video phones).




• Mobile TV won’t work – mobile operators should concentrate on getting content (e.g. pictures & movie clips) off the mobile to more suitable devices (e.g. widescreen TV’s) if they want to boost revenue.