Opera: Our New Browser Will Change the Web
Opera has long been a small player in the browser marketplace. Yesterday the company launched Opera Unite in an effort to cut itself a bigger slice of the browser pie.
Opera Unite is a somewhat mind boggling idea for a browser, which aims to eliminate the need for media sharing sites of Flickr or YouTube by turning your computer into both a client and a server, allowing it to interact with and serve content to other computers directly across the web, without the need for third-party servers.
The idea of sending your friend a link to a file on your computer instead of a URL is interesting. That said, Opera’s claim that this new project will “reinvent the web” has a lot of people in a tizzy about how useful the product really is because unfortunately, if you claim your product is the best thing since sliced bread, people will fight tooth and nail to find ways to point out that it’s completely the opposite.
Cutting out the middle man isn’t something a lot of people are interesting in doing, and as Chris Messina points out in his detailed write up on the service, millions of people are more than happy to leave the storage, back up and security of their photographs and videos to the Facebooks, MySpaces, Flickrs and YouTubes of the world instead of letting it sit stagnant on their hard drive on the off chance that the files might be of interest to someone at some stage in the future.
Will you guys be installing Opera Unite and encouraging your friends to turn their computer into a server? Check out the video Opera released about Opera Unite and let us know your thoughts.
and how do you suppose to advertise that without current actual means of showing media? don`t know if i said this right but i guess you get the ideea.
Yeah, but that's to get the word out. Otherwise only people that already have Opera Unite would be able to view the commercial.
If I understand correctly, Opera wants to make it easy for people to share files directly. Which is fine, but they'll have to do something about firewall/routers/nat configuration hell.
I think they make their idea bigger than it is. I think they just want to make easier and more convenient a bunch of things that already exist, which is good!
But it's nowhere near CHANGING THE WORLD!!!
I hate when they say things like this.
Still Opera is my favorite browser....! too fast...!
With that said, I like Opera. It is my backup browser to FireFox and some of the features of their new 10 beta are very unique and deserve recognition. 100% on Acid Test, saves your tabs upon closing the browser to name a couple.
Pros to Opera Unite:
Saves bandwidth and space on servers
Instead of uploading something to a server to share it, and have it sit there for years when nobody is actually looking up the file
Cons:
Uses your hard drive space (but I keep backups of stuff I upload anyway?)
Seems like a security breach to say the least, I'm sure these connections have to be authorized but there is always the possibility of hackers and how much trust to you have for the person connecting to your computer?
Dude I wonder the same thing. They always talk about "market share" but this is a free web browser we are talking about. Besides ad revenue, who the hell is paying for their web browser?
1. Home computers are not always on, nor are their connections optimal or secure. Everything that occurs here is at the behest of an individuals PC and all of their personal and local settings, and at the mercy of everyone they connect to.
2. If your home machine crashes, if a hard drive dies, etc...then potentially everything is lost. Gmail will always have your email...Youtube will always have your movie...but your home machine may not if a hard drive fails.
3. Security will be a huge mess. You're allowing tons of access to your personal computer while accessing many others in a similar way.
Opera has always been a fringe browser used by geeks and computer science people with a desire for an alternative, and faster browser. It's never been mainstream and these changes are not going to change that. If nothing else, average users that try it may very well open their computers up to even more security issues.
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