Opera Unite is a Hail Mary

snydeq writes "Rather than view it as a game-changer, Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister sees Opera Unite as a Hail Mary bid for Opera to stay in the game. After all, in an era when even vending machines have Web servers on them, a Web server on the Web browser isn't really that groundbreaking. What Opera is attempting is to 'reintermediate' the Internet — 'directly linking people's personal computers together' by making them sign up for an account on Opera's servers and ensuring all of their exchanges pass through Opera's servers first. 'That's an effective way to get around technical difficulties like NAT firewalls, but more important, it makes Opera the intermediary in your social interactions — not Facebook, not MySpace, but Opera,' McAllister writes. In other words, Opera hopes to use social networking as a Trojan horse to put traditional apps back in charge."

Comments

Re:Epic Fail

[hkmwbz]

Looks like you are the one who's not getting it. You don't need to leave your computer on 24/7 for Unite to be useful. Unite is amazingly simple and easy to use as an ad hoc communications channel. I used to upload files to various services just for someone else to have a quick look at it. Now i just drop it the relevant Unite service, and off it goes. And unlike your true P2P scenario, the other guy doesn't need special software. Just a browser.

Central servers will still be kind. Wouldn't live without them. But Unite offers an alternative.

Game changer? No idea. It's certainly revolutionary as far as my usage is concerned. Can't wait to see what kind of other services people will come up with.

You have evidently not even bothered to try learning what it's all about. I guess you are just another mindless Opera basher. If Unite had been released by Google, your keyboard would have been wet with saliva by now. Pathetic.