- The incredible shrinking computer is
at it again.
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- Vaughan Pratt has created the world's
smallest web server, a matchbox-sized device that is small enough to fit
into a shirt pocket.
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- Using off-the-shelf components, the Stanford
professor of computer science has squeezed the hardware and software needed
to operate a web site into a package about one-tenth the volume of a Palm
Pilot, the current standard in handheld electronic organizers. The tiny
device is less than 1 3/4 inches high, 2 3/4 inches wide and 1/4 inch thick
and performs all the basic functions of a typical desktop computer that
occupies 3,000 times the space.
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- "It's basically a powerful little
computer," Pratt says. "We could have set it up for a number
of different uses. But, because most people think of servers as mysterious
boxes, located in dark basements and cranking out stuff for everyone to
see, I thought making it into a web server was particularly dramatic."
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- Equally remarkable, Pratt assembled his
matchbook computer from off-the-shelf components. Other than a power supply,
the tiny server is complete. In tech terms, it consists of an AMD 486-SX
computer with a 66 megahertz central processing unit, 16 megabytes of random
access memory (RAM), and 16 megabytes of flash read-only memory (ROM).
It is connected to the Internet through a parallel port and runs a cut-down
version of Linux, a popular version of the Unix operating system. Because
the machine is a web server, it does not need a keyboard or a display.
It can be operated from another computer over the web connection.
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- After putting the matchbox server online
on Friday, Jan. 22, Pratt notified fellow members of a small computer news
group. From there, news of the tiny server spread rapidly. By Sunday, the
site had received more than 5,000 visitors. In the following five days
it had racked up another 78,000 hits. The server's web page contains a
picture of computer posed alongside a collectible Russian matchbox. It
also contains a detailed description of the tiny computer and gives instructions
on how computer hobbyists can build the server themselves.
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- The previous title for world's smallest
web server was held by Phar Lap Software, using a custom computer that
is 3.6 inches by 3.8 inches by 1 inch in size (more than 10 times the size
of the matchbox server). The Phar Lap server provides up-to-date local
weather data for Cambridge, Mass. According to the company, its purpose
is to demonstrate the possibilities for putting "embedded systems"
on the World Wide Web. Embedded systems are special-purpose computers "embedded"
in all sorts of electronic systems, ranging from ovens, refrigerators and
elevators to medical instruments and factory robots.
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- By contrast, the new Stanford web server
is one of the first projects of a new Wearables Lab that Pratt has started.
The lab is modeled after an older and larger program at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Both labs are developing computer technology that
can be incorporated directly into clothing.
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- "Put this computer into your shirt
pocket, hook it to a wireless modem, and you could carry it around with
you," Pratt says.
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- A person "wearing" such a computer
can see what it is doing by donning and plugging in a special kind of glasses
that doubles as a computer display. Such glasses are sold by several companies.
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- Right now, the biggest obstacle to producing
a truly wearable computer is the lack of a compact method for inputting
data. Pratt and doctoral student Greg Defouw are working on a special glove
that can recognize a digital sign language, called Thumbcode, that they
have developed to replace the bulky keyboard. And future versions of the
matchbox computer should be powerful enough to run voice recognition software,
Pratt says.
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- The Wearables group is already working
on a more powerful server, one based on an Intel Pentium chipset. They
intend to combine a credit-card-size Pentium motherboard that Cell Computing
introduced last fall with a new 340 megabyte hard drive from IBM that is
a fraction of an inch thick and less than 2 inches on a side.
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- "Such a system will be powerful
enough to run the complete Windows operating system and one of the voice-recognition
programs currently on the market," Pratt says.
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