Why Would You Use The iPhone As A Webserver?

Once again forgive me for my leave of absence. I was incredibly busy with school and a big project I received from the Admissions Deptartment here. Needless to say they kept me all but lazy. No need to fear though, I love this website too much to leave you hanging in the dark on the iPhone. So today I wanted to show you guys this app that’s only available in Japan right now, but is coming to the US in March. It’s a very simple app that lets you turn your iPhone into a web server. That’s right, there’s no tricks or magic. Just a real app that delivers real results. You might ask, “Why would you ever want your iPhone to be a web server?” Well we’ll dicuss that soon enough, first let’s take a look at exactly how the app works.

The app itself is called ”ServersMan@iPhone”  developed by a company called FreeBit, which apparently is a company known for making it’s network platform to many VNO/ISPs. That means Virtual Network Operator/Internet Service Providers…Once you install the app you can easily access the iPhone to then put your web files on it. There are two ways in which you can access it by the way. One through a browser, and the other through the webDAV protocol. Although if on the same network you can just connect directly. Here’s proof of the interface right here…

I know it’s hard to read for us English speaking people, but as you can see you have two folders on the iPhone. One for storing files perhaps, and the other for the public HTML. Then you also have what appears to be where you put your domain name in. I wonder if you have to do a lot of DNS changes to point your domain to your iPhone? Anyway let’s talk about this, why would anyone want to host a website on their iPhone? The question is hard for me to answer to. Here’s what I’ve came up with though.

Pros: You can what sounds like skip joining the apple developer application and through a difficult amount of steps develop and host your app on your iPhone…err doesn’t sound like too good of an idea, or that easy. OR you can try another idea someone had. They though they could snap pictures and then host them from their iPhone for anyone to view. They imagined it would work out well for taking pictures of equipment. Then again why not just email them…errr struck down again.

Cons: There’s really no use for the iPhone as a webserver, and it’s not a stable webserver! This is plain and clear, and obviously where I fall in with my thoughts on this. I’m sure the iPhone doesn’t have a static IP and therefore your DNS would be messed up everytime you get on and off the internet. Imagine switch to Wifi from 3G. That’s why this is a mess.

So my question remains, why would anyone spend the time to develop an app that’s pretty useless? Perhaps you can help explain it to me. Until then all of our normal servers seem safe… for now.

As a bonus check out THIS