Opera Unite Quick Review
As I mention before, on what the hell Opera was talking about, it apparently was Opera Unite.
Intro Video
How can I say no to trying this out.
I am actually writing this as I download and install the Opera Unite Labs Release browser (upgrade from my Opera 9).
As I mentioned before, it does seem like a form of cloud computing. This including:
File Sharing - A simple and safe way to share files directly from your computer.
Fridge - A fun place for people to leave notes on your computer.
Media Player - Access your complete home music library from whereever you are.
Photo Sharing - Share your personal photos with friends around the world without the need to upload them.
The Lounge - Invite your friends to a chat in The Lounge hosted on your computer.
Web Server - Host your Web sites running from your own computer.
and more... (assuming new services will come out later)
So from what I am guessing, it actually extends your browser into an actual server. Oddly enough on the site, I cant click the other tabs using Opera 10.0b, but just fine with Firefox... Go Fig.
Now looking at the services (after signing up and all that nonsense) you pretty much have them all installed after getting the Unite version of Opera. The 'Unite' Services are on the left.
The fridge is actually pretty cool, but not sure exactly how it is better than email or IMs... Or even Remember The Milk. I think this is unnecessary and kinda too flashy.
The Lounge is very basic and I would believe a very useful chat tool for anyone that wants to chat to someone that doesn't have IM service or something, obviously if you want to bring more than one person into this chat room. Useful, but nothing new (ie Tinychat)
The Others like Web Server, File Sharing, Photo Sharing, and Media Player required me to add files, and honestly, I didn't feel comfortable enough to go through that, at least not tonight.
All Unite pretty much is, is trying to bring all these tools that you can get from else where or served on other servers, and bring them to your computer, in the end making it a file server. There are still a lot of questions I have about this product. Being only a few minutes after debut, I just wanted to give it a quick look and might go in further, though I doubt it considering the use of beta software on my main machine.
I will leave all that detail up to Gizmodo and the likes :)
But at least we got to see what the hell Opera was keeping us in suspense for :) I'll try it out later this week when I get back from my trip, it might be more useful than I think.
