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Opera Unite
Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 5:00 am
by Paul Arnold
http://unite.opera.com/
Use your browser as your own personal server.
Re: Opera Unite
Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 5:39 am
by matthijs
They better explain much more clearly on the home page what it is, what it does and for whom it is meant.
Also, the introduction movie clip is kind of creepy, with the dark music and voice, talking about the "big servers that control your computer" .. not sure if that's on purpose
Re: Opera Unite
Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 6:10 am
by Paul Arnold
It is a bit weird.
Been playing around with it and there seems to be a bit of confusion between Unite and my.opera.com
Searching for a friend who's signed up for unite brings up nothing and searching for myself brings up nothing but I can login to my.opera.com so it has created an account but it can't be viewed until you login to it.
I realise this is a confusing description but it's also a confusing service.
I'm assuming these are just Beta issues.
Re: Opera Unite
Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 3:25 am
by JellyFish
This sounds awesome. I think that this is what the web really needs, and just for opera. Only with a local server can a external server push data to the client in real time (comet). I think something like this should be standardized.
The way the web is evolving is stunning.

Re: Opera Unite
Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 4:35 am
by matthijs
The only problem is: how is this going to be marketed? The only way I can see something like this being adopted and used by more then a tiny fraction of interested developers is if Microsoft would be behind the technology, throw in massive amounts of money and ship it in their browser, included in every install of Vista
Opera has such a small user base now. And I don't see that going to change soon. Google recently asked people on Times Square NY "what is a browser". Less then 8% could give a good answer ...
considering that, it's even surprising that Firefox has gotten such a large user base
Re: Opera Unite
Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 4:47 am
by Paul Arnold
Just to note, you can actually use Unite with any browser once you've st it up.
I do think they've made it a little confusing for the average person to understand and people just don't have the patience to find out more.
Re: Opera Unite
Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 6:32 am
by jayshields
This just makes me think that it encourages home PC users more than ever to leave their PC on 24/7 and waste energy. Anyone serious about hosting anything online wouldn't rely on their own PC anyway.
Re: Opera Unite
Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 7:11 am
by onion2k
jayshields wrote:Anyone serious about hosting anything online wouldn't rely on their own PC anyway.
Unite is
not meant for web hosting. It's meant for easily sharing things between browsers. That's it.
Re: Opera Unite
Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 8:20 am
by jayshields
onion2k wrote:jayshields wrote:Anyone serious about hosting anything online wouldn't rely on their own PC anyway.
Unite is
not meant for web hosting. It's meant for easily sharing things between browsers. That's it.
Oh, I didn't look into it much, but just saw this
http://unite.opera.com/service/192/
All the other things it claims to do can be done with other services already, but I suppose it's handy if you want capability to do all of them from one package.
Re: Opera Unite
Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 1:17 pm
by JellyFish
What every browser really needs is real comet capabilities, local storage, and the ability to run applications offline. Don't you think so?
Re: Opera Unite
Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 3:36 pm
by matthijs
What I wondered: why is it not possible yet to connect directly with other computer users/browsers anyway?
The idea of Unite, that you can directly share files with other users, without having to email or upload/download those files through a third party (server) is good. But what exactly are the technological difficulties preventing that?
Re: Opera Unite
Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 6:39 pm
by JellyFish
Rather then turning a browser into a server, why not just give browsers the capability to receive and respond to requests (I guess that's the same thing though, huh)?