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"Opera has had great success with their mobile browsers, but when it comes to the desktop, their growth hasn't been phenomenal, despite the fact that Opera, at times, has been the fastest and/or (arguably) the browser with most features. Today, they're unveiling a new feature which will go live in Opera 10, that might finally give Opera the attention it deserves: Opera Unite. \nIn a nutshell, Opera Unite is a web server within a web browser. Instead of just browsing the web, Opera now lets you share files and photos, communicate with other users, chat, and host your web site directly on your own computer. \nSome Background\nTo understand what this means we have to go back and remember why people aren't doing this in the first place. After all, everyone has a connection that lets you download and upload stuff to the Internet, right? Therefore, anyone can locally host a web site. Why, then, is everyone paying for web hosting?\nWell, there are a couple of technical reasons. First of all, lack of bandwidth, especially on asymmetric (like ADSL) connections to the Internet, where download bandwidth is often much greater than upload bandwidth. A popular web site can suck a lot of bandwidth, and most home connections simply couldn't deal with it. Secondly, you need a dedicated, powerful computer (web server) to be able to handle all the database requests. This web server also needs to be secure from intrusions and hacker attacks, it should have backup; in short, it should be a lot of things that the average user's computer is not. Finally, many ISPs prevent you from hosting your own web site by disconnecting you at certain periods, for example, every 24 hours. It's how the web works: if you want to host web sites, you need to pay your ISP for a very a different type of service. \nOpera doesn't really try to change all that, but they do count on the fact that internet connections offer way more bandwidth than they used to, even in the so called developing countries. Now, in an interesting article about the genesis of Opera Unite, Opera's Lawrence Eng explains how this feature came to be: \n\"Our computers are only dumb terminals connected to other computers (meaning servers) owned by other people \u2014 such as large corporations \u2014 who we depend upon to host our words, thoughts, and images. We depend on them to do it well and with our best interests at heart. We place our trust in these third parties, and we hope for the best, but as long as our own computers are not first class citizens on the Web, we are merely tenants, and hosting companies are the landlords of the Internet.Social networking is important, but who owns it \u2014 the online real estate and all the content we share on it? How much control over our words, photos, and identities are we giving up by using someone else\u2019s site for our personal information? How dependent have we become? I imagine that many of us would lose most of our personal contacts if our favorite Web mail services shut down without warning. Also, many of us maintain extensive friend networks on sites like MySpace and Facebook, and are, therefore, subject to their corporate decisions via \u201CTerms of Service\u201D and click-through agreements. Furthermore, what does it mean anyway to be connected to hundreds of our \u201Cclosest\u201D friends? What about our real social networks, the people we want to interact with on a regular basis (like once a week, or even every day)? Why are online solutions to help us with our real-world social needs so few and far between?\"\nIt's a very interesting proposition. With this move, Opera does not try to enhance the web; they're actually circumventing the web as we know it now. They're saying: if you start using Opera Unite to share your stuff online, you won't have to rely on third-party services ever again (except, of course, Opera itself); you'll be in control of everything you own online. \nTrying It Out\nAfter messing with Opera Unite for a couple of hours, I'm impressed. The strength of Unite is in its widgety approach; various services act like add-ons for the browser, and those that are included in this first build work great. Chat - couldn't be simpler; fire it up, you get a URL which you can send to friends; they simply paste it (in any browser, not just Opera), choose a nickname and you're chatting away. Same goes for file sharing; yes, there are services that let you share your local folders over the Internet, VPN style; however, this one is so easy to setup that I don't see why most users would use anything else. \n\n\nSo, what's the benefit of this approach? Freedom. Yes, there are a lot of services out there that let you chat, share files and notes etc., but you either have to pay for them or endure their ads and limitations. You also have to trust them with your data. With Opera Unite, you should - ideally - be dependent only on your internet connection. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that, because a lot of the features cannot function without Opera's servers, which somewhat undermines the point of the entire service. \n*update: Opera's servers seem to be dying under the load, so a lot of the features of Opera Unite might not be available at the moment. We'll get back to it once it's stabilized. \nIn any case, Opera Unite might turn out to be one of the most interesting online services launched this year; and it'll definitely make Opera 10 a worthwhile install. We'll be monitoring its progress closely. \nYou can explore all Opera Unite services here, and download a special Opera Unite build for Windows, Mac and Linux here. Also, see an introductory video to Opera Unite below. \n\n\n\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2009/06/16/opera-unite/>