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

just friends, no facebook, no cloud

[PizzaAnalogyGuy]

It's great that Opera Software understands the power of P2P like sharing between people. I dont want to have everything on sites like Facebook just so people can see them.

Let me give you an example.

If you're cooking your own pizza, you have the choice on what to put in it. Make it a normal pizza or a pan pizza? Make it square or round? What toppings to put on it? Unite allows you bake your own pizza in the heart of your pc, and you can choose what to put on it. Want ham? Fine! Want pineapples? Fine! Want tuna? Fine! Want pepperoni? Fine! What would you have as a sauce? Barbeque sauce! The widgets you install and enable are your toppings and you choose what you want to have.

What comes to the "from the but-does-it-live-in-the-cloud dept.", I personally dont want it to be in the cloud. Then I lose control over it. That would be like having a happening in your town square where everyone is ordered to bake their pizza. They bring it there, put it out and lose control over who eats it. Direct friend-to-friend model lets you control who eats your delicious pizza, or who even knows about it. And if that said pizza happens to be a bad one and it comes hunting you later, you can pull it off. Good luck trying to do that in the town square after people have ate your pizza already.

So what I'm basically saying is that *I* should be the one controlling my content, not some other site or cloud service. Unite makes that easy for people.

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.

Re:Wow, Opera has what I call ambition...

[colourmyeyes]

By this line of reasoning, would you agree with the following?

Despite low desktop usage numbers after more than a decade in existence Linux folks continue to spew out features. Good for them but I still won't touch their product.

Nuff said.

Re:Wow, Opera has what I call ambition...

[sopssa]

And I would even say that it's a better browser than Firefox or Safari, but that's of course everyones own opinion. The robust interface and feeling on how fast things work is just good though. Firefox doesn't really come close with it.

That being said, Opera doesn't really even have low usage numbers. It has over 50% marketshare in Russia and CIS countries, being the #1 browser. It has really wide deployment on mobile phones, Wii's, other electronic equipment and hotel tv's and so on.

Actually making a better profit than Mozilla too, so I don't see why they wouldn't keep developing new things (and Opera has usually been the first one to actually develop new browser features)
Mozilla Foundation: Revenue $75 million (4 employees)
Opera Software: Revenue $89 million (675+ employees)