Opera Unite is a Hail Mary 260
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."
Bad summary (Score:5, Informative)
The summary makes it sound like Opera is making a last ditch effort to stay relevant, which is clearly not the case. Opera has always been in a dominant position in mobile browser marketshare.
Source [statcounter.com]
Re:Bad summary (Score:2, Informative)
Its desktop share is less [w3schools.com] than even Chrome.
As for the mobile market, it is being surpassed by iPhone.
See the arstechnica analysis of misleading statcounter results here [arstechnica.com]
Re:Forgive my ignorance but.. (Score:3, Informative)
Think American football. A desperate throw to try to make a touchdown from an area of the field where you should really be focused on gaining a first down.
For examples, see any football movie involving a slow-motion throw in the last second of the game from too far away that the main character catches against all odds to win the game for Sunnyville High (or whatever) with cheesy music playing in the background.
Re:Bad summary (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe in Apple branded phones, but on all other brands they are way ahead ;)
Btw, non-Apple branded phones is more than 95% of the market even in the US, more than 99% of the market outside the US.
Re:Bad summary (Score:5, Informative)
"As for the mobile market, it is being surpassed by iPhone."
Opera is being challenged by WebKit, not exactly the iPhone. WebKit is the browser in iPhone, Android and a number of other embedded platforms. WebKit was spun off Konquerer and is also the engined under Apple's Safari browser.
WebKit is open source and free which is a key reason its a serious challenge to Opera in the embedded space. Opera browsers are free on the desktop but Opera in embedded applications is relatively expensive to license and closed source so its days are probably numbered in the one place it makes money. Maybe Opera can compete against it by offering better value in some areas to justify the price tag and the head aches of dealing with a proprietary closed source browser.... but in the long run.... I doubt it. Dealing with Opera in the embedded space has all the negatives you would expect from dealing with a closed source, proprietary, software company.
eDonkey (Score:1, Informative)
The article's ending and the summary put an emphasis on traffic having to go through Opera and this being a way to compete with Facebook and the likes. Sounds a lot like another blog I read yesterday. What Unite does, is use Opera's servers as a fallback solution. It works the same way on the eDonkey network.
http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2009/06/17/responding-to-unite-misconceptions [opera.com]
Re:Brown orifice security hole will be back (Score:4, Informative)
Back in 2000 Netscape did a despo gamble like this and its implementation of some java classes was bad. It allowed websites to create classes derived from the server side of the browser and access all the info in the hard disk.
Google for Netscape and Brown Orifice for more details.
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/70 [securityfocus.com]
These were Java bugs from 2000, not something Netscape intentionally allowed. A desperate gamble, WTF?
Such a security hole is waiting to happen. It is really a dumb idea from Apple. One of the biggest plus point of MacOS is that, it is safe and it does not have vulnerabilities. To put that reputation at risk by allowing the browser to dish out data to the outside world is really really a dumb idea.
Yes, there are security features. Yes there are things the user must enable for it to work. Despite all this, having server code loaded up in the memory of a browser is stupid.
From Apple? Who is Apple? Opera? Are you lost? It was Apple's idea? WTF?
Have /. mods gone completely fucking insane?
Re:Not to mention security, bandwidth, etc. (Score:4, Informative)
These [dyndns.com] guys [no-ip.com] do it on a semi-permanent or temporary basis for free, and I'm sure that is more computationally expensive than otherwise. Why should it cost so much money for a permanent one?
Re:SupraBrowser=Opera Unite+Google Wave (Score:3, Informative)
That said, I don't know how to manage an open source project and generate a community around our efforts other than posting to various blogs every once in a while when I see something related.
Some good pointers can be found in The Cathedral and the Bazaar [catb.org].
Slashdotters not getting the point (Score:5, Informative)
I feel that most people here is Slashdot didn't get Opera Unite:
address most issues people discusss here and elsewhere.
Re:Bad summary (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I thought we were against cloud computing? (Score:2, Informative)
Well, part of the problem is that the term 'cloud' is somewhat nebulous at best.
I'm pretty sure that the main issue with cloud computing is the loss of personal control of data, trusting in 'the man', etc.