[Phileas]

Mods - I know this is an app, but I think this would make for better lounge than app thread. Feel free to move if you disagree.

Opera Unite

What do you think? Interesting? Useless? Not important because Opera has no users anyway?
The next nightmare for the RIAA? If we network the network, do we slide towards a: anarchy or b: democracy?

[- - e r i k - -]

"To begin, install and start the Opera browser…" *click*

[starman]

I wouldn't, because my ISP doesn't allow a server on port 80 from my home. I'll bet mine isn't the only one, either.

[Phileas]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

"To begin, install and start the Opera browser…" *click*

Have you actually tried it? I was skeptical myself, but it works extremely well, out of the box. Not sure if I've got any use for it myself, but I like the idea.

[The Godfather]

I am interested.

Do you need an static IP? Does it work in Linux? Can you unroll your own LAMP creations from your personal computer?

[angelmb]

When is Opera 10 supposed to launch?

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally Posted by Phileas 

Have you actually tried it? I was skeptical myself, but it works extremely well, out of the box. Not sure if I've got any use for it myself, but I like the idea.

I like the idea too, but I would never use Opera as a browser. And I already know how to set up personal web sharing, it's after all only one click in the Sharing Preferences

[Phileas]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

I like the idea too, but I would never use Opera as a browser. And I already know how to set up personal web sharing, it's after all only one click in the Sharing Preferences

I think you're not giving this a fair chance. I agree with your notion about Opera as a browser, but take a look at this. What used to take a fair bit of setup with a service such as dyndns - which you might well be familiar with - is now one click away. This is a no setup sharing, webhosting and publishing setup and it's pretty damn impressive.

What I particularly like is the levels of privacy that are built in.

[- - e r i k - -]

Oh I completely agree that it is an impressive simplification of something completely incomprehensible to users. It is something that Apple certainly is trying to do with something like Back to my Mac, and even that has failed miserably.

I'll be impressed if they've jumped the technological hurdles to make this a true one-button solution for the end user.

I'm just not sure why they've tied it to their extremely niche browser.

[Oisín]

To make their browser less extremely niche?

[besson3c]

It's hard for me to disagree with the viewpoints expressed here:

Thoughts on Opera Unite | FactoryCity

This thing is waayyy overhyped.

[- - e r i k - -]

A good writeup by someone who actually cares on why it isn't going to work:

Thoughts on Opera Unite | FactoryCity

Conclusion

Okay, so I **** all over Opera Unite, but you can’t come out and promise all kinds of world-changing, freedom-enhancing goodness and then not deliver! — worse, to do so when their newest competitor (Google!) is schooling everyone with the perfect example of how to do it right (see: Wave).

While I have problems with Opera’s marketing approach, I do think that it’s useful to have Unite in the marketplace so that I can point to it as an example of what I want to see happen with the Diso Project — though I’m not willing to rest my success on the fate of any particular browser.

Through a combination of technologies like OpenID, OAuth, XRD, Portable Contacts, Activity Streams and microformats, we’ve been moving in this direction for some time, without having to alter the browser. Of course that’s meant that the browser has been conspicuously missing from the conversation, but that too is changing (see Mozilla’s experiment baking OpenID into the browser with Weave), and with Unite, we have yet another vision to contemplate — though I would have loved to have seen Opera embrace more than just Activity Streams out of all the technologies from the Open Stack.

[- - e r i k - -]

Besson beat me (work got in the way between thinking about posting this morning and actually doing it), but I brought a summary since I know people don't actually care enough to actually read the article.

[shifuimam]

I was impressed with it. It seems to be very "one-button" to me - easy to work with, and some minimal examination shows that they appear to have taken good security measures. Everything works through their proxy, so traffic is filtered before it gets to your machine - although the previously linked article would make you think this is a bad thing, it isn't. Protecting people from malicious content is a good thing, and when you're talking about essentially making local resources available on the Internet, you need to take every precaution possible.

It's pretty great for doing things like sharing files privately, and really easy to do - just copy the file to a local folder, and it's available online. I really like the music library sharing stuff - I'm going to have to look into that, so I can easily get to my music collection from work (and anywhere else).

Although it does require Opera, it's no different than anything else requiring a piece of software - you could use Opera exclusively to serve Unite content.

I think that it's easy for people like us (and bloggers in general) to look at something like this with a pretty critical eye - there's all these other services out there that do this exact same thing, so what does Opera Unite offer that the other services out there don't? The thing is, the non-geek types (like my mother, who's about as technophobic as they come) don't want to have to sign up with a bunch of different services to do a bunch of different things. They don't want to have to rely on the probability that the people they want to share their content with have accounts with those same services. You can't put your photos on Flickr and make it Family-only unless you know for a fact that all your family members have Flickr accounts. You can't put your stuff on Facebook and be certain that your grandmother or great-aunt has a Facebook account. Same with Google and anything else out there.

With something like this, you can put your content up there, password-protect it, and nobody has to have an account with anything to be able to access your stuff. All they need is the password you've set. It's an extremely attractive solution to people who try to stay as far away as possible from what they see as trendy sites for young people - which is what stuff like Facebook and Flickr look like to many people in their forties, fifties, and beyond. It's much easier to send someone an email that says "click this link and enter this password" rather than "Go to Flickr.com, sign up, add me to your contacts list, I'll add you back and set you as a Friend in my contacts list, and then you can click this link and see my photos"...which is the other thing - while us Internet types have no problem with what essentially amounts to cyber-voyeurism, there are plenty of people out there who want to keep things personal - and want to know who's seeing photos of their sixteen cats.

I'm not saying that Unite is going to be a smashing success, but I don't think we can predict 24 hours after its release that it's going to be an epic failure, either.

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

With something like this, you can put your content up there, password-protect it, and nobody has to have an account with anything to be able to access your stuff. All they need is the password you've set. It's an extremely attractive solution to people who try to stay as far away as possible from what they see as trendy sites for young people - which is what stuff like Facebook and Flickr look like to many people in their forties, fifties, and beyond. It's much easier to send someone an email that says "click this link and enter this password" rather than "Go to Flickr.com, sign up, add me to your contacts list, I'll add you back and set you as a Friend in my contacts list, and then you can click this link and see my photos"...which is the other thing - while us Internet types have no problem with what essentially amounts to cyber-voyeurism, there are plenty of people out there who want to keep things personal - and want to know who's seeing photos of their sixteen cats.

Ah, but by that standard MobileMe trumped them. Nothing easier than sharing photos from iPhoto straight to MM with or without passwords. Even sends out granny-friendly e-mails to boot. Now try explaining granny why she can't access your photos because your computer was turned off.

I don't have a problem with the concept per se, an easy to use personal webserver can be great for a lot of things, I just don't see why they tie it up to their completely marginal browser, and then try to sell it as some sort of freedom-enabling libertarian ideal.

People. Just. Don't. Care.

[shifuimam]

True, but MobileMe is $100 a year. That alone is going to stop a lot of people from signing up.

I don't see Opera as being that limiting as a requirement - it's no different than MobileMe requiring a certain piece of software (iPhoto; don't know if there's a Windows app that works with it) to upload photos, etc.

I'm not saying that Unite is the greatest thing evar, but I also don't think it's a massive piece of sh!t and destined to be an epic failure, either.

[- - e r i k - -]

Depends on how you define epic failure. Destined to the obscurity heap of technology? Almost a certainty.

It doesn't really solve anything that hasn't already been solved, or handled better like with Google Wave.