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.

I purchased my N95 at a subsidized price from vodafone; when I received my N95 it was loaded with firmware version 11. You can find out which version firmware is loaded on your phone by punching in the following key combo: *#0000# . Nokia have recently released a new version of their firmware for the N95 that enables assisted-gps, firmware version 12. Keen to upgrade I contacted Nokia, first by dialing 191 and subsequently popping into their local store to ask for a firmware upgrade – but no joy. I don’t think the network provider has any real interest in updating firmware, as each firmware release requires comprehensive testing by the network provider to make sure it’s as stable as the previous version. The vodafone representative suggested I visit a local nokia service centre, which I did. However, it turns out that nokia have supposedly banned their service centres from touching the N95 as ‘it’s complicated’, any ‘fixes’ have top be undertaken back at nokia, which means a lengthy wait. Arrgh what do I do? Do-It-Yourself (DIY) – worst case scenario I end up with a £150 paperweight?

There is a little gem of an application named the Nemesis Service Suite (NSS). Now I’m not sure exactly how this software works, or what exactly it does, but it was very useful. It’s handy software as it lets you change your Nokia mobile phone product code. So I back up my phone to memory card, change my vodafone product code to the nokia product code (0536062) (more product codes) and proceed to update my firmware. The nokia software updater now lets me download and install firmware version 12 (thinking I’m an unbranded phone). Now I have the new assisted GPS capabilities…but all is not well, my phone is now unresponsive, hangs and to be honest is pretty close to being a paperweight. So hoping to fix this I restore my memory from the memory card, but this just makes things worse, much worse. I restart my phone only for it to crash halfway through start up and suggest I contact my provider? Arrgh? It really is a £150 paperweight.

Surfing the web and I find a key combo that will format the phone, I hold the pencil key, plus *, plus 3, while booting; it performs some sort of reset, erasing everything on the phone memory, but the memory card is untouched. I then use NSS to switch my product code back to my vodafone product code and all works well…really well. I’ve been using it for best part of a month now and its working fine. I remain cautious as to what happens when vodafone try to upgrade my firmware, but that’s for another day.

So if you take this approach…

• Make sure all your contacts are stored on a memory card and not the phone.
• NSS will allow you to change product codes and ‘trick’ the Nokia software updater into installing the latest firmware.
• If you back your phone up to the memory card before the update, don’t restore unless prepared to reformat, and risk ruin.
• To avoid buggy behaviour, after the update, swap the phone back to it’s original product code.
• Your warranty is probably rendered null and void.
• Cross your fingers.

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Having vague recollections of working with Java whilst undertaking my undergrad dissertation at Lancaster way back when, I plumbed for Java and promptly downloaded the Eclipse IDE. Next up, I installed Carbide.j, a suite of mobile development tools from Nokia. It was at this point I encountered my first frustration; it turns out the Carbide tools from Nokia don’t support the latest version of Eclipse, a school boy error of failing to read the doc. A quick uninstall, download, and install later, I’m back on track with an older version of Eclipse (3.1.2).

Nokia have provided a whole host of up-to-date documentation for building LBS applications for the series60 platform, so I downloaded their TouristRoute Java Midlet example and their location API developers guide. The location API is pretty concise, with a handful of important classes:


LocationProvider: represents the source of the location information (in this case the integrated GPS)

LocationListener: receives events associated with a particular LocationProvider.

Coordinates: represents coordinates as latitude-longitude altitude values.

Location: represents the standard set of location information (time-stamped coordinates, speed, accuracy, course, etc.)

Landmark: represents a known location with a name.

LandmarkStore: has some methods for persistent landmark store management (store, delete, and retrieve landmarks).


The sample built fine, generating a Java Archive (JAR) file and Java Application Descriptor (JAD) file. The JAR file is a package of the classes and resources, the JAD file a description of the Midlet. Right clicking on the JAR file (the midlet executable), the Eclipse context menu gives you two deployment options:


1) Deploy by Bluetooth
2) Deploy to Web Server


Unfortunately my laptop doesn’t have Bluetooth, so I went with option two and uploaded the files to my server (they can be downloaded here). I uploaded both files, the JAR and the JAD, I’m not sure if both are required or not? I added corresponding mime types to the .htaccess file on the server (this instructs the server how to handle requests for jar and jad files) and browsed to the jar file with my mobile phone browser. A couple of keypad clicks later, the application had been downloaded and installed on my phone.

I have had the phone for a couple of months now and am very impressed. Nice design, great camera, and a half decent GPS, but it’s the open development platform that sets this phone apart from the crowd, allowing everybody and anybody to develop a whole host of useful (and not so useful) applications. So far I’ve already acquired SportsTracker, which allows me to save my mountain bike routes as KML, some handy software that uploads my photos to my Flickr account, and the ubiquitous Google Maps which syncs nicely with the GPS.

I’m waiting in anticipation for the new Nokia N95, it’s due for release this spring and promises a lot with regards to geo-enabled mobile applications and digital photography. Pocket sized it has a 5 mega pixel digital camera with what should hopefully be a half decent lens from Carl Ziess, and…assisted GPS! A few phones out there have this kind of functionality, but the big plus here is that this is the first Nokia phone to run the 3rd edition of the series 60 platform (S60).

The S60 platform provides rich developer support, here’s a blurb from the Niokia website…

application developers can work in C++ (using native Symbian OS APIs), the Java™ language (using Mobile Information Device Profile [MIDP] 2.0 with an extensive range of additional Java™ Specification Requests [JSRs]), Python, Visual Basic, or C#, as well as with Macromedia Flash from Adobe.

One particularly useful JSR, available on S60 3rd edition(sp1) phones, is JSR-179 – a location API. This means, for the first time, developers have access to location information outside of the walled garden. No longer do mobile developers have to make a web request to the mobile operator for the location, they can just grab it locally of the phone, mash it up with their spatial data, and bingo, you can find your nearest pub.

I haven’t tried my hand a mobile application development, but with the comprehensive SDK’s from Nokia, I can’t imagine it will be long before someone writes a little app that records the location of your camera phone photos and spits out some kml.