The Butt Ugly Weblog

Apache for Nokia cell phones

Well, it's not quite out yet, but I've experimented with it a few times, and it's very cool. But the web site is up at the brand new Nokia Research web site.

Having a industrial-grade web server on your cell phone is a pretty good sign that the thing in your pocket is a full microcomputer with full computing and connectivity capabilities. However, quite a few people still see the cell phone as exactly that - something that you call with, and nothing more.

I usually get two kinds of reactions from people whenever I mention that I work for Nokia. The first group starts complaining that the current cell phones are too complicated, and that they really need just a cell phone. And SMS. And clock. And the ability to change the ring tone. And bigger keys and display, but a smaller form factor.

The other kind of a reaction I get from people who tell me - in no uncertain terms - that Nokia should do X, where X ranges from an extra button to do whatever people happen to think is important for them, to some really wild stuff.

(Then there's the third group that tells me why Nokia platforms suck, but let's not get there right now. Maybe later.)

Anyhow, (I'm up to my third beer tonight), and I'm setting up my aunt's new printer, and I've almost completely forgotten what I was going to talk about....

...

Yeah, the perception of mobile phones. It's odd: mobile phones are such intensely personal devices, that people really see them completely differently. Some people can't simply comprehend why manufacturers roll out devices with all sorts of capabilities that most people will never use, but on the other hand, there's a number of people that want to have PC-quality graphics, sound and bandwidth in the cell phone, too. And it's really, really hard to cater for both extremes. At some level, cell phones are always about compromises, far more than PCs ever are.

However, I think it's still exciting that people are constantly pushing the boundaries on what cell phones can be. Having a web server in your cell phone might not feel such a grand thing (I'm sure a lot of you are asking "why" at this moment), but I think it's important in the exploratory sense. The reason why you now have SMS is that someone once thought that it might be cool to be able to send short text messages around, though he couldn't exactly figure out why you might want to do that on a crappy keypad. Who knows what a web server in your cell phone might turn out to be in a few years?

(Via Matt.)