Opera 10.10 Released, Includes New "Unite" Tech

Opera 10.10 has been released, and with it their new "Unite" technology, which allows users to share content directly between all of their own devices. Unite wraps both web browser and web server into a single package in an attempt to change the way users think about their browser. "'We promised Opera Unite would reinvent the Web,' said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera. 'What we are really doing is reinventing how we as consumers interact with the Web. By giving our devices the ability to serve content, we become equal citizens on the Web. In an age where we have ceded control of our personal data to third-parties, Opera Unite gives us the freedom to choose how we will share the data that belongs to us.'"

Comments

Re:just friends, no facebook, no cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, it means that content on Unite is ephemeral and subject to the vagaries of hosting everything on one's computer

You must be new here - TO THE ENTIRE INTARWEB - if you honestly think that every single shred of corporate-hosted content isn't already volatile and at risk of disappearing at any moment at the whim of somebody you don't even know.

The Web has ALWAYS been volatile. That is both a strength and a weakness. Right now the Web is thoroughly capitalistic in nature; are we proposing to fully socialize it, to the point of demanding that everything "submitted" to the Web instantly becomes public domain and forcibly archived somewhere for all eternity?

The lesson you should learn is that if something you see on the Web is important to you, don't count on it being there a year from now: save a copy for your own damned self. Nobody else can read your mind and know that it's important to you and thus feel obligated to keep it anchored in the exact same spot because you'd prefer it. Regarding whether we should change the ownership of information once it's been made thus public, that's a (ongoing) debate for another place and time.

Re:just friends, no facebook, no cloud

[mjihad]

Or does Unite provide a way to find the content that other people have put up? I don't understand what market Opera is trying to target here. Anyone with the where-with-all to setup their own web server and the associated DNS host records and the like has probably already done so. The OP bashes on Facebook, but Facebook (and Myspace and whatever the other sites are) offers the person an ability to tell someone else, "Look me up on Facebook. My name is..." Does Unite offer the equivalent capability?

I think the idea is more to host your own stuff, such as your pictures or some other small app like the Fridge notes without having to muck around with DNS and servers and pasting the link to your friends over IM. That way you can tell your friends to leave you at note at an URL like http://macbook-win7.jfim.operaunite.com/fridge/ instead of having to sign up for yet another service for only one simple app.

It seems to me that the large majority of what people want to share online isn't their own content, but content that they come across. Facebook is the perfect example. It seems to be filled with links to YouTube, links to other webpages, and blogs and whatever else any particular person finds interesting and wants to share with their friends. Very rarely do the large majority of people want to share content that is uniquely theirs. The one big exception that I can think of is music. Myspace seems to have the lion's share of that market. And on the subject of music, who wants to eat the bandwidth costs of serving up music from their own computer when a site like Myspace, or YouTube or listentomymusicyo.com will do it for you, for free?

I don't think the purpose is to replace any serious hosting proposal, it's more of a share with a handful of friends thing.