A short article on one way of communicating through the Web from/to a Arduino board.

This article explains how to use the Arduino and an Xport Ethernet module to send and retrieve data to an external web server. I discuss the advantages of this method over various other methods of communications between Arduino and the internet. After discussing hardware setup, some simple test code for Arduino and the PHP code that you need to run on the web server is provided. Some real world extensions of this project are a web page that lets you control the lights in your house, or sending sensor data to a web page and graphing it so you have a pretty record of sensor readings.

[From Hobby Robotics » Arduino, Xport, PHP and the Internet]

This short extract seems to describe the differences between a Portal Server and a Application Server quite well:

Enterprise Portal & Portlet FAQ:

What is the difference between a Portal server and an Application server? Before understanding portal server, we will have to understand portal. As we know, portal in nothing but a web application. In simple words, a portal server is an application having a portal and its management capabilities. In traditional web application, we have a separate management section for managing the web application. Portal server provides the application as well as that management section. In other words, a portal server is an application deployed inside application server.

Whereas, an application server is a system that provides the execution environment that is at the core of network computing or web-based architectures, providing a full set of services.

Technorati Tags: Portals

I like this little Arduino project - it will work well with my blog (-;, - every time someone reads the blog it blinks a LED....

I already wrote my first Arduino program. It’s really simple but fun

What it does is that every time somebody visits my website, a LED light blinks once in my room, and I get a warm feeling of a visitor

How to do that:

Burn this code to your Arduino.
Connect a LED light to pin 12 and ground it.
Connect your Arduino to your web server through USB.
Log in to your web server and type: “sudo chmod 666 /dev/ttyUSB0″.
Add this PHP code to your website header.
Enjoy!
In case this doesn’t work; try to solve your problem or comment this article and I will try to help you.

A interesting project that you can connect a Arduino with a Ethernet shield to for sharing sensor data :

Pachube (pronounced "patch bay") is a web service available at http://www.pachube.com that enables people to tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices and spaces around the world.

The key aim is to facilitate interaction between remote environments, both physical and virtual. Apart from enabling direct connections between any two environments, it can also be used to facilitate many-to-many connections: just like a physical "patch bay" (or telephone switchboard) Pachube enables any participating project to "plug-in" to any other participating project in real time so that, for example, buildings, interactive installations or blogs can "talk" and "respond" to each other.

I do love these projects from MAKE:, I am going to order this particular kit to teach myself more about microcontroller programming :

In this build I am going to be making the XPort shield that is available from LadyAda's web site. The shield will allow you to connect your Arduino to the Internet and check your email, interact with Twitter, send SMS messages, and a whole lot more.

[From MAKE: Blog: Arduino XPort shield build - Part 1]