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Comments: 262 +- Technology: Opera 10.10 Released, Includes New "Unite" Tech on Monday November 23, @03:16PM
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by
ScuttleMonkey
on Monday November 23, @03:16PM
from the but-does-it-live-in-the-cloud dept.
from the but-does-it-live-in-the-cloud dept.
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software
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.'"
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Submission: Opera 10.10 Released by Anonymous Coward
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just friends, no facebook, no cloud (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
On the other hand, it means that content on Unite is ephemeral and subject to the vagaries of hosting everything on one's computer(such as the information only being available while the PC is powered on and Opera is running, not 24x7). Also, does the app data stored on a computer running Unite survive a reinstall, which tends to happen often on Windows machines?
Parent
Re:just friends, no facebook, no cloud (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
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?
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Facebook and the like offer zero security. If you understand the risks of what happens on Facebook well enough to make an informed decision to put your stuff up there, you probably understand it well enough to throw up a quick web server.
The social media have been a great equalizer in terms of access, but that's a double edged sword.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Opera apparently made a business decision to go for the 0.1% of the market
It's about time they focused on growing their userbase!
Re:just friends, no facebook, no cloud (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [opera.com] 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/ [operaunite.com] 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.
Parent
Re:just friends, no facebook, no cloud (Score:5, Insightful)
If you check out some of the Unite apps, it isn't even necessarily about sharing.
Parent
Re:just friends, no facebook, no cloud (Score:4, Informative)
The target market is the not-tech savvy home user. Grandma wants to see the newest pics of her grandchildren getting a bath, and styling the new clothes she sent to them. Momma ain't real tech savvy, but she can put those pics into a folder, then invite her mother (in-law) to view the folder via unite. Easey-peasey. There's no need to put those pics on MySpace, Facebook, or any other hosting site - they are private. In fact, putting naked baby cheeks on the web just MIGHT get someone arrested for child pornography - the laws are crazy in some places.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That makes a lot of sense. It fills that niche for data that is too big or otherwise burdensome to share via email, but that you don't want to put on a site like Flickr, YouTube or the like.
Re:just friends, no facebook, no cloud (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, you can mark your stuff as "private" in a lot of places - but they are still hosted in the cloud. I haven't poked far enough into Opera Unite, but I don't think they cache your pics. Meaning, once Grandma gets those pics, you can remove them from your shared photo, and no one else is going to get them, either from Google cache, a guessed password, or whatever. Besides - will Flickr share your warez files, or your ripped MP3's? It seems that Unite will share ANYTHING you want to share.
Parent
Re:just friends, no facebook, no cloud (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That was me, but Thunderbird isn't behaving quite the same way with /. RSS feeds these days and it doesn't recognize logins, so comments made inside the RSS feed wind up being anonymous. It used to be that hitting Reply would spawn the browser, but not so any more; I don't know whether it's Thunderbird or Slashdot to blame for the change. It's not as practical as before, but maybe that's a good thing if it causes me to keep my trap shut more often?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My PC is powered and running 24x7.
If you lose all your data everytime you reinstall Windows... I've got one trick to teach you.. it's a brand new concept, called partitions... And another one, called backups... bleeding edge stuff !
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What protections does the cloud afford ?
- Privacy ? uncheck.
- ownership rights ? uncheck (woman's personal photo used in an add)
- data security ? uncheck (see Sidekick)
Any connexion to the Web is a conduit for malware: Bittorrent, IE... Because MS regularly makes a hash of things does not mean that any connexion is unsafe. Please, prove your point.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm confused, even though you made a pizza analogy (maybe there's a reason we stick with car metaphors). I from the summary and press release, I thought unite was mostly for sharing stuff between your devices, not with other people or as a social networking... thing... I was under the impression that there were plenty of, er, cloud services where you could put your files on the cloud and then share them with one person instead of everyone.
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I'm confused, even though you made a pizza analogy (maybe there's a reason we stick with car metaphors).
Ok, you drive a hundred miles, wrap your frozen pizza in tin foil (much like our hats) and put it on the exhaust manifold. The result is... PIZZA!
(and no, I'm not PAG. I think he used to be BadAnalogyGuy but that's just an ignorant guess)
Re:just friends, no facebook, no cloud (Score:5, Insightful)
It'd be interesting to see how they're handling security, though. Damn, now I'm going to have to download it.
Parent
Re:just friends, no facebook, no cloud (Score:5, Interesting)
It even seems to be a pretty good performing web server, opera are also know for their good attitude towards security. I think it's killer.
Parent
Re:just friends, no facebook, no cloud (Score:4, Insightful)
And you require all of your family to join Facebook, click past their terms of service, and befriend each other?
Parent
Re:just friends, no facebook, no cloud (Score:5, Insightful)
You really think Opera created a shill /. account solely devoted to the heretofore unheard of pizza analogy?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Exactly. Hi-Fi = sites you have to sign up for, upload, invite your friends to, get them to sign up, log in, etc. All you do with Unite is send them an URL to whatever they need, and it's done. Also, Unite is much, much easier to use than standard web servers, P2P, FTP, etc. And it can be add
Except in China? (Score:3, Insightful)
I love how all the computer companies have these new-age wonderful human mottos for their products, like "Unite", and then cut deals with dictators to try and make a couple of extra bucks.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I haven't seen a response to that yet.
What were Opera's alternatives?
Refuse? They would be thrown in jail, and the Chinese office would be history.
Pull out? How would that help anyone? It would just deprive the Chinese people of another way to access the web. The more ways to access the web, the more work for the government when they are trying to censor
Re:Except in China? (Score:4, Interesting)
What were Opera's alternatives?
They could have refused to do business in China, as long as the Chinese policy doesn't change.
Just like IKEA have stopped doing business in Russia [nytimes.com], for slightly different reasons.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They don't "graciously cooperate", they are forced to. And no, it does not make the censors' job easier. The more services, the more work to keep track of everything.
No, they are forced to, and at the same time they are offering choice.
like the old slogan (Score:2, Funny)
Dyslexics of the world, untie!
Forget "Unite"... how's Opera doing on CSS 3? (Score:3, Insightful)
It may sound silly and pointless to a lot of devs, but supporting things like border-radius and drop-shadow (even with the temporary vendor prefixes) would be nice.
That's one area where Safari is way, WAY ahead of both Opera and Firefox.
Breaks broadband service contract? (Score:3, Interesting)
Holy retro Batman! (Win 98) (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wow, Opera has what I call ambition... (Score:5, Insightful)
But why won't you try Opera? Is there a good reason? Is it because it's closed-source? Is it because at the beginning they were not offering their browser for free?
FWIW, Opera is a fine browser, much better than IE, on par with Firefox and Safari. Also runs very nicely on a Nintendo DSi, given the limits of the system.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I have. It's on my system right now along with Firefox, Konqueror and Chrome. Addons are the critical component in which these other browsers than Firefox are very much behind. I would ditch Firefox in an instant if Chrome or Opera or Konqueror managed to be as flexible as Firefox but they're not... yet.
Re:Wow, Opera has what I call ambition... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have. It's on my system right now along with Firefox, Konqueror and Chrome. Addons are the critical component in which these other browsers than Firefox are very much behind. I would ditch Firefox in an instant if Chrome or Opera or Konqueror managed to be as flexible as Firefox but they're not... yet.
Most of the features that are provided by add-ons to Firefox are built-in to Opera. Additionally, Opera allows User JavaScript, and even supports GreaseMonkey script. So ... is it just a matter of the principle and theory of flexibility, or are you actually missing some specific function that is provided by add-ons in FF and not provided in Opera?
Parent
Re:Wow, Opera has what I call ambition... (Score:5, Informative)
Right-click->Edit site preferences.. lets you edit those for individual sites. If you want a no-script like thing, disable global javascript and enable for sites you want it to function at.
Parent
Re:Wow, Opera has what I call ambition... (Score:5, Informative)
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 [opera.com], 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)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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The word you were looking for was manifold, but you should have said fourfold anyway. Also, while it's okay to say less with respect to number, it's not okay to say little; and you would have been better off saying "too few add-ons".
And then you failed to address the whole reason for TFA. We don't care why you don't use Opera; we care why you won't be using Unite.
Re:Wow, Opera has what I call ambition... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Linux doesn't go out of its way to please the Chinese government with its new update; Opera did. Linux isn't closed source either. The two aren't in the same boat here.
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What? The government of China told Opera to change things? That's strange, I would have thought the democratic government in Taipei would do better than that.
Re:Wow, Opera has what I call ambition... (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone asked: "How does not having any kind of access to Opera Mobile/Google/etc helps the people in China, compared to having a censored version?"
I haven't seen a response to that yet.
What were Opera's alternatives?
Refuse? They would be thrown in jail, and the Chinese office would be history.
Pull out? How would that help anyone? It would just deprive the Chinese people of another way to access the web. The more ways to access the web, the more work for the government when they are trying to censor it. There needs to be as many ways to access the web as possible, because the more there are, the more difficult it is to police, and the easier it is to poke holes in the firewall. You are clearly blinded by your own ignorance.
Parent
Re:Wow, Opera has what I call ambition... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they chose to comply in order to avoid trouble like arrests of their Chinese employees and such.
But you didn't answer the part of my comment that dealt with how staying in the market helps the Chinese people, and how pulling out would be detrimental to their freedom. Again: More services = more work for the government = less oversight = more chances that there are holes in the firewall.
As it happens, there are several ways to access the uncensored web through Opera Mini even after this. If Opera pulled out, these holes would be gone forever, and there would be no opportunities to open new ones. Your brain. Use it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's because neither Firefox nor Chrome work like Opera Mini. They are like Opera Mobile, but Opera Mini is a thin client which needs a server to handle websites, because that's the only way it can work on low-end phones.
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Despite low usage numbers after more than a decade in existence Opera folks continue to spew out features. Good for them but I still won't touch their product.
I wonder why. It's not open source but it's still gratis and technically superior to anything else I've tried.
For me, Opera is like Usenet (Score:3, Insightful)
Best kept secret.
Nice features with a target size small enough that malware that might go after IE or firefox won't touch.
I browse in a VM with Opera. Never lets me down.
Still a small size. Damn thing fits in less than 10 MB of disk space.
Stuff like this unite threatens this. I wish they would stop making it better so suckers will stay with IE and firefox.
The unite stuff rocks. Your parents could never setup p2p or ftp, but they can use unite. Better than some file sharing site when all your family has got
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Y'know when I first saw this I thought "hey cool, if only it was on some other browser"...
What is it about Opera exactly that has the stink of death on it? I mean it went through phases where it wasn't free and had embedded ads in it, as far as I know those days are long gone. So if that's the case what gives?
My current running theory is that it just has an unfortunate name. When I think of "Opera" I think of a long, boring musical experience in Italian.
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Re:ISPs won't like this (Score:5, Informative)
ISP's wont care about it. They only do if you start running some heavy traffic stuff on it. Here in Scandinavia that has been standard clause in the TOS for ever, but I've never got any saying from ISP about it (even while actually running a high traffic website on my 100mbit).
Lots of people also run gaming servers, even more so because for example MW2 is now automatically choosing one of the players as a listen host. P2P clients also usually start a listening server, technically, and so do all the IM clients when sending a file and so on.
They wont have any problems with this.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Can I give you my Mom's phone number so you can explain her how to do that ?
With Unite, she was up and running in 20 minutes.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You're dealing with nerds, here. Coming up with 'Ogg' was probably a defining moment in that young person's life.
Rejected names were "ReallyGoodVideoCodec", "VideoOpenSource" and "dvxiddidvxd".