The age of embedding Web-servers

The last period witnessed a "web-server-mania". Although I'll talk about running my pc as a server but this is not the reason why I say that.

About running my PC as a server it is not very sophisticated and can be done, just five systematic steps

• Obtain static IP address.
• Open port 80 (The port responsible for receiving HTTP requests).
1. Adjust local firewall settings (to let HTTP requrests pass in).
2. Do port forwarding (To open the port from the network and direct requests to the proper computer - To do it I downloaded the manual of my Router and searched for "port forwarding").
3. Check the port is opened.
• Install the server software on the pc; normally the word "Server" refers to two meanings the first: the Computer running as a server and the second: The software that translates clients' requests and reply by suitable responses (like what the browser does on the client side).
• Register for a dynamic name service; that maps a certain DNS to your static IP address.

But the process even after its success is full of disadvantages, this article which summarizes the drawbacks of hosting on your own PC.

Back to the main thing that made me write this post ..

A Japanese Company called FreeBit had announced an iphone application that "server-ize" the iphone ...

 Yes once this application is installed on the iphone, all PCs can access it exactly like a web server.

Check this post for more information.

From the ability to "attach" the server on my PC to "embedding" it to a pocket device will change many concepts or at least make them more flexible and different from long age they were.

New web ideas

Instead of studying algorithms for tomorrow's final exam, I prefered to break the ice of exams days by talking about 2 of these new ideas, I've recently read about

The first is simple; You write a message and determine a distenation email, instead of recieving the message, the distenation will fracly recieve other 2 things: an mp3 attached file and a link to a flash both are audio version of the message. The project launched on Tuesday is called "Blind Speak" is its beta version.

The other thing I would talk about is just a fancy way to preview google search results for a query that is inspired from Linux famous desktop cube.

You can rotate the cube by holding shift + dragging, open a search result by clicking it ..

Check search-cube

Make use of technology, but takecare of your culture

Launched nearly "Google ta3reeb" which converts efficiently the "franco-arab" (a fancy name of Arabic pronounced language written in Latin alphanumeric letters) to real Arabic.


Worth mentioning that the idea is not new, it was previously applied by the Yamli editor, The process is know as "Transliteration".

I'm not saying it is an evil or bad technology, in the contrary the idea appeals to me and helps "franco-arabians" a lot, that's why I wrote about it, but in the occation, I'm advicing those "franco-arabians" -including me :D- to be careful about their culture represented in such a simple thing as catching up with their laguage's keyboard layout.

Change famous sites templates with foxReplace

It seems that I've signed my contract with Google
and have started designing their pages .. or I'm a VIP that popular sites are writing about me, actually the story is quite different.
The trick is in the fire fox add-on: foxReplace.
After installing it:

• Press file "Edit", then "Replace" (instead press Alt + F2).
• Write in the left box the phrase you'd like to replace, and in the right one the replacement.

cool trick isn't it?