Tom,
This is one of the areas we are constructing some tutorials for at present, so in some time we'll have a good resource. But until that happens, you could upload to something like COSM (formerly called Pachube):
http://mbed.org/cookbook/Pachube
COSM just uses HTTP requests so all you'd need is the HTTPClient:
http://mbed.org/cookbook/Vodafone-K3770
http://mbed.org/users/donatien/code/VodafoneK3770HTTPClientTestBeta/
You could also use another HTTP service like twitter, or pastebin if you were feeling particular bohemian/adventurous.
If you want to use sockets, then you can either use the BSD sockets or the c++ sockets API:
http://mbed.org/handbook/Socket
The C++ api is easier in the sense that it is more abstracted, but the BSD sockets is more directly portable.
Now of course, if you use sockets, then you need to have some endpoint to talk to.
This could be an existing service you want to talk to. You can search the cookbook to see if there is a client for your service else you'd have to write your own. For example, you could connect to an SMTP server and send emails, you could connect to FTP and upload a file. Looks like there is an SMTP client:
http://mbed.org/cookbook/SMTPClient
But I wouldn't use that personally as it doesn't support TLS. Having said that, we don't currently have HTTPS either, so there is a security issue unless you write your own authentication, encryption, and integrity routines. I guess it depends what you are logging and whether you care if others can see it/mess with it/spoof it (where "others" here means people with the resources to compromise a router or machine in the path that your packets take, or inject spoofed packets into your stream).
You could also abuse the websockets API:
http://mbed.org/cookbook/Websockets-Server
Now, for writing your own simple server, for example to log to a file, something like nodejs is easy to pickup. Again, without encryption etc the security is going to be effectively null. But whatever language you use you will need to have a somewhere to host the server program.
You could even host the server on your own machine at home, and use a dynamic dns service to map your ISP-allocated IP to a static domain name. You'd have to configure your DSL router firewall (or equiv) to let through and NAT incoming connections, but its a cheap alternative if you don't have access to a hosting environment.
Hope I haven't been too skittish. If that all went over your head, you'd be best to wait for a good tutorial to come along :)
Cheers
Ashley
Hello Andrew,
LPC11U24 based mbed can not act as USB host, only as USB device. So If You want to use any dongle, You will need LPC1768 mbed.