Turn Your iPhone Into a Web Server 158
miller60 writes "A Japanese company called Freebit has released ServersMan, an app that turns the iPhone into a web server. It debuted in Japan in February, has now been launched in the US, and is being touted as a 'Personal Data Center.' Freebit also has a video with additional information on server-enabling your iPhone. 'Once the app is installed, PCs on the internet can access the iPhone to upload or download files through a browser or they can use the webDAV protocol. If the PC and the iPhone are on the same network, the PC can connect directly. If they are on separate networks, then FreeBit's VPN software will engage the connection.'"
Hah, you wish (Score:4, Insightful)
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I dont know about you, but atleast here in scandinavia unlimited 5mbit 3g costs 30euros/month.
Now, power usage might be a different thing, but it doesnt matter either if you have it wired (like I did when I used it for normal web browsing and gaming etc)
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I used it for normal internet stuff for a month and phone bill noted my total traffic being around 200GB for that time, and no extra or hidden costs.
Here its actually mandatory to note it as unlimited* traffic if it does contain some limits, like they say unlimited* phone calls and sms (* max 3000 mins per month).
Re:Hah, you wish (Score:5, Insightful)
if it does contain some limits, like they say unlimited* phone calls and sms (* max 3000 mins per month).
That just seems so deceptive it's terrible that it's allowed to go on. Basically: "Unlimited* internet and phone service! (*Not really, we lied.)"
I can understand that they don't REALLY want to sell unlimited, but in that case it should instead be listed as:
3000 Minutes per month and 10,000 SMS messages per month - $45
Or whatever, rather than stating it as unlimited and then "defining" unlimited as something clearly NOT unlimited. It's like telling your buddy that you just "hung out" with his girlfriend last weekend and nothing more, but then trying to hide somewhere you're redefining "hung out" to really mean "banged like bunnies". In all other walks of life that's just called a lie.
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Or whatever, rather than stating it as unlimited and then "defining" unlimited as something clearly NOT unlimited. It's like telling your buddy that you just "hung out" with his girlfriend last weekend and nothing more, but then trying to hide somewhere you're redefining "hung out" to really mean "banged like bunnies". In all other walks of life that's just called a lie.
I KNEW you were still holding a grudge!
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O2's definition of "unlimited" for cellphone plans is 300MB per month. They are the iPhone network in the UK.
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Given how much mobile phone providers like to slug their customers for traffic...
Wi-fi.
what possible advantage is there to using such a device as a server?
Less functionality is preferable?
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Many providers charge for data over wi-fi just like it is over 3g.
How's that supposed to work? My phone remembers how much data it has transferred over wifi and tattles on me to AT&T?
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Sprint can only charge for for data that they provide. If you're using WiFi on your own router, you won't get charged for that. They may mean that not all wi-fi is free.
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What? Letting some company dictate what you can and cannot do with a device you legitimately bought is a "good thing"? A "good thing" because you can't see "what possible advantage is there to using such a device as a server"?
As long as you are not breaking the law, Apple has no right to block you using such applications. (And even if you are breaking the law, it's law enforcement's problem, not Apple's.)
I myself do see an advantage in having a web server on an iPhone, if only over WiFi, and not 3G. It
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iSpam in your pocket?
You need never worry about what to do for lunch again!
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battery life reduced to 60min, 30, 10, 5, 1...
Therefore, pretty much a niche app.
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My iPhone stays plugged in at my desk most of the day at work. Not that my current company allows anything like it on the company internet, but my previous companies would have and it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to have a little test server in your pocket sometimes.
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There are other web server type apps in the Apple store and have been there for some time. They provide a way, mostly, of moving data on and off the device, but nonetheless they still act as a web server.
This one would be more objectionable to the ISP than any other as they hate having consumers operate servers out of their homes. That's the primary reason they capped the upload speed of cable internet.
Re:yawnnnn (Score:5, Funny)
Apple today announced a revolutionary new upgrade for the IpHoNe. For years, people have only used phones for accessing the Internet, listening to music, taking photographs and playing games. Now Apple bring a new development to the market: the ability to communicate via voice with someone who is not even in the same room, as if by magic.
The initial version will only allow communication with other Iphone users, though rumours suggest users can get around this limitation by jail-breaking the phone, in line with Apple's "Works, Just" tradition.
Some have pointed out that a few phones have already allowed such a feature, but Apple fans have dismissed this. "Other phones may have done this before, but how many people used it?" commented such fan. "Apple were the first to integrate it properly. Thanks to this innovation, I no longer have to lug my landline around with me as well as my Iphone."
You're accurately describing next month's happenin (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed. VoIP by Apple.
Why do you think they are reworking the iPod touch?
Apple has the way to relay from one market to another like noone else.
While all others still are working to duplicate iTune store they already switched to micro-application sales (iApps); similarly, they are preparing for a world where internet connections via GSM phones (call it 3G or what) will be more complex than via Wifi.
You can bet they'll be running their supersimple, proprietary VoIP solution for months when the others just beg
yawnnnn indeed (Score:2)
apache? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Well...
Once the app is installed, PCs on the internet can access the iPhone to upload or download files through a browser or they can use the webDAV protocol. If the PC and the iPhone are on the same network, the PC can connect directly. If they are on separate networks, then FreeBit's VPN software will engage the connection
From the summary... That is something apache does not do out of the box.
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What, pray tell, is insufficient about https?
Difficulty of obtaining a certificate for each server from a commercial CA, for one.
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Just use a self-signed certificate. Its better than plain http anyways.
And if I remember correctly such certifices cost like $5-$10 and can be automatically purchased too, atleast from some issuers.
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Great! We get another random company's software and security vulnerabilities in the way. What, pray tell, is insufficient about https? Apache has vulnerabilities, but they are found and patched. Who is Freebit, and why should they be trusted over Apache?
I apologies. I see the point you are trying to make: homogeneous computing environments are better than heterogeneous ones because we all have the same vulnerabilities. The world would be a more secure place if we all ran one set of software, one operating system, and one computing architecture.
Right...
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A homogenous network of secure computers is better than a mix of secure&insecure, you only need to break the weakest computers. If you run 30 pcs with 30 different operating systems then only one needs to get exploited for there to breach of security. The advantage of heterogeneous systems only applies when
1) Your dealing with two systems that are roughly as safe
2) You are dealing with a layered secured system. attacker -> A -> B -> C (important stuff)
As this is a web server your looking simpl
Re:apache? (Score:5, Funny)
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Because it's on the IpHoNe!
It's rather like how you can get a patent by taking an existing idea, and doing it "On the Internet" - in this case, you take something that's been done on other phones for years, do it "On the Iphone (after jailbraking it - Apple "Just Works", don't you know)", and suddenly you have a media-worthy story.
How long until... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exactly. I'm surprised Apple are letting this fly as it is. They don't even want you running Flash on your iPhone, let alone using it as a web server.
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"I can easily imagine AT&T jumping for joy over anything that will produce more billable traffic"
I think the iPhone only comes with "unlimited" data, so I don't know that ATT will be that thrilled...
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I notice you sidestepped the issue. If you can see a valid use for this, please, enlighten us.
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Apple's issue with Flash has something to do with the potential of Flash, in hands of a real Developer. It can render App Store useless. Control is gone.
I speak about things like these
http://g.ho.st/ [g.ho.st]
https://buzzword.acrobat.com/ [acrobat.com]
Flash Lite 3 is already distributed free (to developers) if you want to code an application for Symbian using Flash. Of course, Symbian has nothing to say about it.
Imagine entering a website which will stream music to you and offer mp3 downloads for a fee, all in web browser. That is
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And, if that's the case, also why I'm perplexed at why people like the iPhone. This level of obsessive control by Apple pisses me off.
Re:How long until... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I don't see why they are referring to this as a "server", it's bad PR. No ISP technically lets you run a server, so why would a provider let you run one through their cell towers?
Instead, they should call it a personal data syncing app or something.
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*Homer Simpson Voice*: PATENT PENDING! =)
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No ISP technically lets you run a server
Huh?! How do all the servers get connected then?
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Not quite true here in Australia - my ISP - Exetel - lets me run servers on my home plan. The one exception is servers sending spam mail.
My plan provides a fixed IP, ADSL 2+, uncounted uploads, and a reasonable flat rate (AU$3 /GB) for traffic over the limits (8 GB peak, 50 GB offpeak) for AU $46 a month.
Terms of service:
http://www.exetel.com.au/a_acceptable_use_adsl2.php [exetel.com.au]
In their forums Exetel management have said they have no problems with businesses using their residential services, or vice versa - they j
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http://worldnet.att.net/general-info/terms-dsl-data.html#useserv [att.net]
AT&T's DSL service agreement, section 10; be Fair subsction b.: You may not use your Service connection to host a DEDICATED INTERNET server site. (emphasis mine).
The AT&T iPhone agreement however states: "Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation . . .downloading movies using P2P file sharing services, redirecting television signals for viewing on Personal Computers, web broadcasting, and/or for the OPERATION OF SERVERS, t
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In the case of DSL, you CAN run a server, just not a dedicated internet server site. A Remote access server, personal FTP server, even a web or file server you run occasionally, even "most of the time" can not be considered a dedicated server.
Sorry, but that's not correct.
I'm not going to trawl through the link you provided, but I will point out that there are countless businesses using DSL lines to connect to the internet and I'll guarantee that many are running dedicated servers. If you doubt my words, t
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A business account TOS and a residential accoutn TOS agreement are 2 very completely different things... and also the bill you get for that 6MB business DSL is about 3 times the price.
AT&T may be fine with your current use, but likely that's because they have NO IDEA what you're doing... They're not interested in blanket scanning their network for people who host a simple server for personal use. Your internet load is minor by comparrison even to a casual torrent user. ...but, as soon as they decide
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Nobody's going to use a phone-based web server to serve pages to other nodes. How would you even discover the address? Or get through the AT&T firewall?
It's for web applications where both client and server are on the same device. This is actually a very common use case. Google desktop is a good example.
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3G kills your iphone's battery in less than two hours. There's no way someone could actually "run a webserver" off their iphone..
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Vulnerable. (Score:5, Funny)
What, no link? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Slashdotting Your iPhone? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdotting Your iPhone? (Score:5, Funny)
So what happens when you've got several thousand people trying to get on your phone's server?
Hrm, lets take a guess...
A) You find out rather quickly at the end of the month when reviewing page 32,725 if your hardcopy AT&T itemized bill that arrived on a pallet that you went over your "unlimited" data plan.
B) You find out rather quickly that more than ten TCP streams to your phone prohibits voice sending and receiving.
C) AT&T takes about 37 more seconds to realize that they need to block port 80 after this story was slashdotted.
D) All the above.
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So what happens when you've got several thousand people trying to get on your phone's server?
Load balancing ... that is if you have a family plan.
.....why? (Score:2)
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who would put a web server on there?
Does the word "Epeen" mean anything to you?
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No.
Why? Is it some kind of hammer, like a ballpeen?
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Re:.....why? (Score:5, Funny)
It's ZuneLink for geeks. Your eyes meet over a darkened server room, you whip out your iPhone, she pulls out her G1, you whisper seductively "http://192.168.0.1/somewhere_in_time.mp3"...
And suddenly you hear "Never gonna give you up!" You totally rickrolled her!
Re:.....why? (Score:5, Funny)
you had me at colon slash slash
Is that a volcano in your pocket? (Score:2, Funny)
Or did someone just slashdot your iPhone?
just because you can (Score:1, Insightful)
doesn't mean you should.
Re:just because you can (Score:4, Funny)
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I have an iPhone. I also have an OpenBSD firewall, a Debian FTP/NFS/SMB server, a LAMP server running on a toaster, a Hackintosh, and a spare system with Windows 7 on it. I guess now I'll have to get a social life or something. This not being a geek thing is going to screw up my schedule.
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You must be new here.
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just because you can (Score:2, Insightful)
doesn't mean you should.
...unless it's on Android, then it's okay.
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run Linux on their toaster?
Linux? Linux? To repeat a post below: Geek card. Now.
Slashdotting some hipster to death (Score:2, Funny)
what iphone needs (Score:1)
why is it that they dont have a central repository ? correct if Im wrong I dont have a iphone but why do others have to wait when something comes out ?
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These have been around for a while (Score:5, Informative)
I've used an app that does this for a while now. It's called Data Case and provides WebDAV and FTP access. There's a bunch of other ones on the app store as well. I fail to see how this is news.
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I fail to see how this is news.
Because you were trying to hard to get an early, highly-rated comment and didn't RTFA, WatchTFVideo, or even RTFSummary. Besides running a basic webdav server (which I, also, already have, with Air Sharing), "If the PC and the iPhone... are on separate networks, then FreeBit's VPN software will engage the connection." That is, you sign up for an account with them and you can access your iPhone from anywhere on the Internet by going through their server.
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Seriously, though, it's not like the networks are 'different'. You can probably get the WWAN IP of your iPhone and connect to it just fine, normally.
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I shudder to think needing to access my iPhone from anywhere on the Internet .
Shouldn't it be in my pocket?
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This is correct. Since you can't move data to or from the phone without using a network, and there is no means to do P2P direct sharing (until 3.0) a lot of developers ended up rolling their own servers. It's not uncommon to see embedded web servers in apps in order to facilitate sharing.
Honestly, it drives you nuts to have your users asking things like "Why can't I just drop documents on iTunes and sync them?" and have to answer with "I don't know - ask Apple". Moving data to and from the phone is currentl
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Not only that, but all kinds of servers have been available for other smartphones/PDAs for ages now, including web, ftp, and even sql and probably a few more obscure ones as well. This reminds me of Fark's tagline: "It's not news, it's iphone!".
This article it's dumb (Score:2)
I fail to see how is this news and how is this interesting.
Any jailbroken iPhone has been able to do this ages ago, in fact I was doing some AJAX experiments on the iPhone using vim (which was the only decent editor the iPhone had as I had copy/paste and search/replace) when I was bored.
Btw, I did not buy an iPhone, it was given to me and the truth it's I dislike it, if only it were more open...
Not so much free as "unavailable". (Score:2)
It's not available from the Canadian iTunes Store.
So either someone messed up when they submitted the application, there's a delay before it shows up in the Canadian store, or Rogers is screwing everybody including iPod touch owners.
Which one of the three is it, I don't know.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
it's been done (Score:2)
Here ya go [gnu.org].
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And...? (Score:2)
Jailbreakers have been able to do this for a while, and I haven't seen much come from it.
Seems pointless. It would hurt battery life, would have a poor uptime, and would be slow to interact with.
So why is this even on here?
-Taylor
iPhone App Saturation... (Score:4, Insightful)
their sign up is either retarded or broken (Score:2)
log on my mailserver says:
May 15 13:37:00 mydomain postfix/smtp[384]: E91D1242E9AA: to=, relay=shrike.dti.ad.jp[202.216.228.218], delay=2, status=bounced (host shrike.dti.ad.jp[202.216.228.218] said: 550 5.1.1 ... User unknown (in reply to RCPT TO command))
May 15 13:37:01 mydomain postfix/qmgr[27465]: E91D1242E9AA: removed
hmmm... to=
I wonder how they expect THAT to work. (yes I did put in my email address on the ipod) I'm sure that's supposed to be in the FROM.
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apparently slashdot convulses if you put a greater than in your text...
May 15 13:37:00 vftp postfix/smtp[384]: E91D1242E9AA: to=(GREATERTHAN)signup-noreply@serversman.com>, relay=shrike.dti.ad.jp[202.216.228.218], delay=2, status=bounced (host shrike.dti.ad.jp[202.216.228.218] said: 550 5.1.1 (GREATERTHAN)signup-noreply@serversman.com>... User unknown (in reply to RCPT TO command))
May 15 13:37:01 vftp postfix/qmgr[27465]: E91D1242E9AA: removed
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This is marginally off-topic, but I'll consider this public service.
apparently slashdot convulses if you put a greater than in your text...
No, it silently ignores your bad HTML markup. After all, "<" and ">" are tag markers. If you post a comment in "HTML Formatted" mode (and most do, 'cuz it's the default), you don't own less-than and greater-than; markup does.
And there's a hint: it's HTML, so use HTML character entities. like, "<" and ">".
BTW, that was painful, cuz I had to escape th
This already exists, and it's called Air Sharing (Score:5, Informative)
It's called "Air Sharing", and its new big brother, "Air Sharing Pro".
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=312686749&mt=8 [apple.com]
Highly recommended; well worth the $5.
Been there, done that, didn't get a T-shirt.
No, it's called Mobile Web Server (Score:3, Insightful)
It's been done before and it's $0.
My mobile webserver [nokia.com]
My mobile site [mymobilesite.net]
Stupid iPhone Apps from the Future (Score:5, Informative)
Automobile Oil Temperature Monitor (includes supply of flexible, heat-resistant oil-tight enclosures)
App for monitoring money under matress (includes jumbo external battery pack)
Tire pressure monitoring and reporting app (you'll need at least 4 iPhones + contracts; includes generous supply of foam rubber padding; includes plug-in pressure transducer)
I thought japan hated the iphone (Score:2, Informative)
Very common, not noteworthy at all (Score:3, Informative)
There are lots of web servers for the iPhone. Lots of audio recording applications use a web server to allow you to transfer recordings off the iPhone. I'd suspect there are other categories of applications that also provide a web server.
Not sure you'd want to us the iPhone as a general purpose web server though. That seems dumb.
Nokia has it for ages (Score:3, Informative)
While people arguing if it will be banned today or tomorrow, Nokia offers such web server for Symbian phones for years now with features making sense.
http://mymobilesite.net/screenshots/ [mymobilesite.net]
It is Apache/Phyton and several other technologies combined. In fact, it is also a great multi platform phone remote same time for local usage. They solved the NAT/Web robots problem very interesting way too, a real server routes and filters the calls to the phone subdomain so Google doesn't come to your phone as a robot.
The features of it (check screenshots) makes sense, it is not something like 'my toaster runs web server'.
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You are correct, and that's a Nokia hosted site you linked to. Nokia has also released the source code for the site you linked to, here:
http://wiki.opensource.nokia.com/projects/Mobile_Web_Server [nokia.com]
From what I understand, the nicer setup made-possible would essentially make the nokia Phone a 1st replicating server, and what the public visits/sees is a conventional www-mirrored replica of the 1st (phone) server. (And the PAMP is something else, more like a regular Apace server)
The hidden beauty of this, is this
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...and it's a real server too, ie you can put it into the background and leave it running all the time, and have it start automatically when the phone boots.
Try that sort of thing on the iPhone. I don't know why people put up with Apple. I borrowed an iPhone with the intention of trying it out. I opened the box, popped in my sim card (needs a special tool!), and then switched it on...then became very confused because it seemed to be suggesting I couldn't use it without iTunes. They're not seriously suggesti
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Yes, I posted that message specifically for that reason. To show how different Nokia (or any Symbian vendor) and Apple takes things. Of course, iPhone served too, Nokia wasn't that kind of company before iPhone.
It also shows the Nokia has a horrible PR problem, in USA. Imagine iPhone had this kind of a real apache working with Python scripts that can even remotely take photo of place. I mean, all in official way and free.
Go ahead and turn your iPhone into a web server (Score:2, Insightful)
Just because it can be done does not mean it should be done.
Dang, and we'd finally gotten companies to isolate web servers from sensitive data systems and now this stupid idea.
I'm surprised this passed Apple's approval (Score:2)