Nokia Research recently announced the Apache webserver had been ported to run on S60 phones (see my earlier post). The plan had been to “bring a full-fledged webserver to S60 and to make a webserver running on a mobile phone accessible from the Internet using any web browser”. Now the client binary is available for download and you can sign up for an account on Nokia’s gateway and try this for yourself.

Here’s Apache running on my N70.

(I recently upgraded to the N70 from the 6630: I wasn’t sure whether to wait for a S60 3rd Edition phone but in the end the 2 megapixel slide-and-shoot camera, the flash and larger memory won me over even if the tiny keyboard and all-blue backlighting is a considerable step in the wrong direction, usability-wise).

From the Read Me:

Raccoon consists of two parts: a Symbian port of the Apache httpd webserver and a “connector” that together with a gateway provides a mobile phone with a global name in the operator networks of today. In short, you can now host a website on your mobile phone that is accessible from any web browser on the Internet.

There is a lot of (demo) functionality to explore: “there are custom modules for accessing the core functionality of the phone - camera, contacts, favourites, log and messages - and modules for sending instant and inbox messages to the phone, and a module for finding mobile websites in the proximity”.

Now that I’ve got this up and running I guess I need to get to work on my mobsite.

(via Tommi’s S60 applications blog)