We told you last week that browser maker Opera was generating quite some buzz by being secretive about their plans to ‘reinvent the web’. Well, the company this morning unveiled what it was referring to: technology that essentially turns every computer running the Opera browser into a full-fledged Web server. Behold Opera Unite.
You can use Opera Unite to share documents, music, photos, videos, or use it to run websites or even chat rooms without third-party requirements. The company extended the collaborative technology to a platform that comes with a set of APIs, encouraging developers to create their own applications (known as Opera Unite services) on top of it, directly linking people’s personal computers together, no matter which OS they are running and without the need to download additional software. The company recognizes that the current services are fairly basic, but says this is just the tip of the iceberg.
We’ll take a deeper dive in Opera Unite real soon, but I’m impressed with what it looks like on the surface. This is a really good idea at its core, and I encourage you to read Opera product analyst Lawrence Eng’s blog post on the subject for more background and an idea of where Opera is heading with the concept. A small excerpt:
“Currently, most of us contribute content to the Web (for example by putting our personal information on social networking sites, uploading photos to Flickr, or maybe publishing blog posts), but we don’t contribute to its fabric — the underlying infrastructure that defines the online landscape that we inhabit.
Our computers are only dumb terminals connected to other computers (meaning servers) owned by other people — such as large corporations — 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.”
Opera have been doing browser innovations for quite some time and this will another innovation that will copied by others sooner or later:
8 Browser Innovations Started by Opera:
http://www.geek...arted-by-opera/
Opera is ok, but this isn’t one of their innovations. See for example
http://www.tonido.com/
But, maybe Opera will have better marketing or technology.
Yes. Tonido did the same thing 3 months back.
http://www.code...hakon-wium-lie/
easy to to share movies! Yay!
Nothing new. Browser + P2P plugins.
I suppose it’s still very green, I’m trying to get 2 computers on a LAN to see each other and nothing.
FrostWire on the other hand does work for internal file sharing (search, browse) so they must still have some bugs to iron out.
Good initiative though, too bad their user base isn’t that big of a deal, the whole p2p concept on the browser will fly once the mozilla foundation starts promoting plugins of this kind, but I guess their efforts are now geared towards HTML 5 objects, and for P2P to succeed in the browser we’ll need standard protocols.
Opera has supported for a long time BitTorrent downloads by default, maybe it’s time for Firefox to do the same, but who knows what the impact of a decision of that magnitude would be on ISPs.
The day will come when Mozilla will implement P2P objects for all web developers to use in javascript, that’ll be an interesting day indeed.
I think it brings a whole new level to P2P. I hear the sound of business models popping. If they get the user interface right and it’s idiot proof, then it can really begin upending things.
Well done Opera. Ah the blessings of a competitive browser market.
Well, it will be good in a way if other browsers copy this. But they should copy in a way which implements this using some type of (Opera-defined?) standard so that a Chrome for example can talk to an Opera – or something like that
The API itself is Open Source though.
P2P got an unusual bad branding, and innovative Opera my be hurting itself by embedding it. Hope, this time it will be different, and I like the idea of empowering the common people.
One problem: NAT and firewalls. Large parts of the net aren’t live and most ISP’s don’t allow residential clients to host services. Opera have not proposed anything that will NAT-punch (it requires central servers like the roles trackers play with torrents).
Second, like every other good idea Opera has, this will just get picked up later by another browser maker or the open source community and implemented better. (MSFT are already there with Mesh – a much better implementation)
Most of the switches I’ve seen recently come with UPnP enabled by default, so it obviates that problem.
….and most people that know what UPnP turn that “feature” off.
Mesh is an interesting angle. That’s more of a “hosted everywhere” kinda solution compared to Opera Unite’s “hosted locally”.
-Jamie
If NAT has been a problem for anyone since the late 90s, all I can say is you need to trade up your network admins. Some of us help solve these issues back in the day. Incompetence is the issue.
Ope who?
Oprah. You know, the TV chat show woman? She’s Uniting the world.
Can you please cut through the jargon and explain how this will may my life better or easier?
You serve data directly from your own computer. Connections are direct. Anyone can view that data from any browser.
You don’t have to go through someone else’s server to share data. You have complete control over your own data.
You can set up an ad hoc chat session with the Unite chat service, and to invite people you simply send them the URL and they can open it in their browser and join the chat. That way you can gather lots of people on the fly for quick collaboration if you are working on a project and just need a quick round of real-time communication.
… but is that actually “better”??? There are good reasons why P2P services haven’t found mainstream use. And this implementation is particularly bad since it
You have to worry about connectivity. (e.g. this semi-forces you to keep computer *and* browser running 24×7).
You have to worry about firewall/NAT issues.
You have to worry about scalability and performance.
… and bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth.
In corporate environments this disperses content across individual computers around the company which is much, MUCH harder to manage. It departments and project managers will come to hate this service.
Re: “chat session” – There are dozens of ways of doing that, none of which require Unite.
You are *Still* dependent on servers – Opera’s! E.g. I can’t create my opera.com account (slashdotted?) and, even if I could, the Unite services require I authenticate to use them. So if Opera’s servers are down, what happens to your Unite services? Can you still use them?
(*whups* To finish that first paragraph …)
.. particularly bad since it can’t distribute your content across the P2P cloud. At least, not without serious risk of compromising your “control over your data”. Thus, the availability of your content depends entirely on how accessible your Unite server is.
“There are good reasons why P2P services haven’t found mainstream use”
BHAHAHAHAHA!
obviously you have never used the pirate bay which has around TEN MILLION users around the world.
As a matter of fact, the pirate bay has more users than a few countries’ entire population.
How is that for mainstream?
omgz@! Google has even more millions! That means they have more users than even MORE countries!
My Mom, no way near “one of those computer people”, without any help me, started using P2P networks 5-6 years ago.
The only thing holding back further implementation of p2p is easy security, and an undeserved reputation.
Isn’t it Opera’s job to do that?
This has piqued my interest…I’ll be watching.
Imho:
Opera Unite + Decentral Social Network Software + Ad Hoc Networks = Communication Networks of the Future
… with a nationwide broadband network of the past.
I suspect that the “Direct Access” arrow in the diagram is leaving out quite a few significant details. Letting someone directly hit my desktop, thru my firewall? Yeah, uh, I don’t think so…
Look up UPnP.
It reminds me of (dead-pooled) AllPeers
Did AllPeers let you create any kind of service using normal web standards, and was everything accessible from any browser? Or did it require that AllPeers was installed for everyone, including those who just wanted to download something?
Allpeers? What was that Cedric ?
Soon as I saw this – that is what I said Cedric.
They (like Allpeers) will have the same adoption problem, they are trying to solve a problem most people don’t have.
It is a difficult sell, they would be better to concentrate on 1 vertical application like re-inventing email etc., rather than what they are doing. In which case they could just use your OS binaries
To me personally, as a user- Operas main downfall has always been its complete lack of available extensions / plugins. While it may or may not be a superior browser to firefox I couldnt make the switch in its past or current state.
I know it would be a crazy thing, but maybe it would be a good idea to have opera have 30-40 people doing nothing but copying/mimicking the most popular extensions from AMO
If this feature is as inventive and amazing as they claim, I will simply wait for Mozilla to release something similar. Opera isnt going to steal me (or I suspect many other users) just by being slightly faster/secure (if it is at all)
Didja try the widgets?
I don’t see what the big deal is. I’ve run a personal web server for many years.
But how many people are going to want to leave a machine on and connected 24/7, handle the maintenance, etc. in order for people to access whatever they offer? Not many. That’s what servers are for.
How did you run that web server? I bet it wasn’t trivial to set up. And could you set up chat, a music player, etc. with just a few clicks?
Unite allows for ad hoc data sharing with easy access from everywhere, and the people connecting to you only need a browser. Any browser.
Unite allows normal users to publish things from their machine in just a few clicks. Something that was reserved to nerds and power users who knew what a web server is, how to get one, set it up, set the NAT, get a DNS to point to their IP, …
Unite gives the mom of the world a similar power.
And who is going to explain to mom that she has to keep her laptop running ALL THE TIME if she wants to keep her published items available?
Seriously: Opera Unite is not for the casual user, and the power users have far better alternatives.
There’s a perfect solution for serving files: it’s called a server.
Publishing things from your home machine is sure to run into uptime and bandwidth problems.
yeah man, that’s hard.
how about this: “Mom, don’t turn off the machine please.”
I think the point is that Unite is meant to be used in an ad-hoc manner – you share stuff with your real-world social network if and when you need to. It’s not designed to replace servers and those apps like Twitter, YouTube etc we all know and love, it’s simply a different approach to using the Web. It brings the power and the benefit closer to home, right into your family circle, even.
And the people you share with don’t need to be running Opera, either.
I think there’s a lot of potential there to make sharing more natural… pass the sugar, please. So what if it isn’t a single new web app with millions of users.
Exactly. Uptime, maintenance, 24/7 power consumption, ISPs restricting upload volume, are big obstacles.
On Flickr I have close to 4,000 photos, each is 3 megabytes in size. Flickr / Yahoo have enormous pipes / switches etc. so you can surf my stuff as fast as you want. Flickr will feed you at 8 megabits and more. Try doing the same thing at 128 kbps. Ridiculous. The same goes for video, only several times worse.
I use my personal server to serve up some low bandwidth low traffic stuff, some FTP for my friends and employees, and it’s works okay. My serious web offerings live on a real server with mirrored drives, conditioned power, and a 24 megabit pipe. Don’t try that at home, folks.
To answer another comment up the tree there, I run LAMP at home and do all the myriad setup and configuration because I can and because I enjoy it. This is far beyond most users but there are simple turnkey web servers one can install and run. That plus an account with no-ip.com and you’re in business. So it’s not that hard if someone wants to run their own server.
I’ll be curious to see how this new feature of Opera goes but I just can’t see any use for it.
>> “But how many people are going to want to leave a machine on and connected 24/7″
You’re missing the point: Opera Unite is meant to enhance the creation and interaction of social networks. Thus, if you’re done for the night and switch off your computer, you’re out of the network until you return. Others can continue as they please.
The same as when you are having a party or having a live collaboration meeting online with other people.
You are comparing it to the current “static” and impersonal use of the Web, where stuff is posted for the sake of offering it to others, whether you are there or not; and social “interaction” is reduced to communications stored at and relayed by a centralized system.
-dZ.
Right. And I’m gonna change my browser to Opera just so that I can turn my browser into a web server. Good luck with that.
You don’t have to change your browser, just have it open, a pretty trivial thing to do.
User’s perception of security will be a major factor for adoption.
All the bundled services allow the owner to limit the access, and none of them delete files or information.
Very good point, well-worded. Security may not be a problem, but perception of security certainly will be for some.
I have a hard time understanding how screwed I am after installing so many apps that give some form of access to my desktop (Skype, voicemail monitor, desktop sharing). Perhaps this is desensitizing me to real risks, though.
What about the bandwidth/traffic?
What when a shred items gets dugg/retweeted?
As far as I understand the upload of many broadband connections are still very low…so a webserver for private use alone is fine, but for a larger audience?
I don’t know!
I can see why this could be interesting, but then again, I’m not really all that excited about this. I never saw any problems in using a server for handling data. In my opinion, it’s a huge plus because nobody has to rely on being online all the time or their connections being solid not even to mention the possibility of hard drive failure etc. The privacy issue with servers, which the video seems to draw a lot of attention too, never concerned me much. I would be way more worried if I had to rely solely on private computers and connections rather than great server stations with equally great safety measures. Am I just interpreting this the wrong way?
“I never saw any problems in using a server for handling data. In my opinion, it’s a huge plus because nobody has to rely on being online all the time or their connections being solid not even to mention the possibility of hard drive failure etc.”
Ma.gnolia
You have a point, but even though the cloud failures still occur, I would much rather rely on cloud storage as opposed to local storage.
But even though online storage may fail once in a while (I can’ really come up with other examples than Ma.gnolia though, feel free to prove me wrong), the security issue is still what concerns me the most. It would probably be a piece of cake for any tech savvy person to access my files locally, especially if they’re “available” online through Opera Unite, rather than hacking their way through a well guarded server forest. (I like to think of my cloud services that way; maybe I’m just terribly naïve)
Good luck launching this anywhere near the UK with our crappy upload bandwidth.
That’s not entirely true. I have about 1.6Mb actual upload and, whilst it’s not in Sweden’s league, it’s not bad.
Broadband is changing fairly rapidly here anyway, and developing a service aimed at users today would be dated within 12-18 months.
It could be really interesting in countries with censorship like Iran and China.
Its a Joke.
Double-Click on Tomcat and you ahve your personal web-server… lol.
Whats new here?
And the main reason people use hosted servers is that their uptime is guaranteed etc.
And who wants to share their personal computer? Is there something called security?
Double-click on Tomcat and you have a chat service, media streaming, picture gallery and whatever other services are coming when developers out there start coding?
Who wants to share their personal computer? Maybe if you had paid attention you would have known that it will only share the things you specifically tell it to. But hey, don’t let facts get in the way of your whining.
It is certainly an interesting idea, although the key would be to somehow package it in a way so that even the dumbest non-tech savvy user can use this.
We have already seen some home NAS vendors provide Internet file sharing and media streaming capabilities out of the box with the NAS, so this is just extending the paradigm to the desktop.
Upload bandwidth will be a very real issue, especially if this idea really takes off and becomes popular.
The obvious (but expensive) remedy of course, is for Opera to build a CDN to cache all this sharable data closer to the clients. But that goes against the whole privacy sell then.
This sounds like a potential mine field, not only could it encourage users within corporate networks to leak information and resources, but it could generates a raft of legal issues with piracy, security, intellectual property, but also it could create huge virus and botnet problems with inexperienced users potentially openning up access to their machines.
Will opera take off where pirate bay stopped, and who will it be in the dock then?
And that’s the sound of lawyers at it again, slowing down innovation with their never evolving laws.
Copyright has to be reinvented (see Creative Commons), it has no place in an information society.
The whole legal system should also be reinvented with laws that can only be interpreted in one way alone, no room for ambiguity. Then we could automate it, and lawyers wouldn’t be needed.
Language is always subject to multiple interpretations. It is not possible to invent laws that can be interpreted only one way, with no room for ambiguity. The laws would be so complex and so ridiculously long that even lawyers wouldn’t be able to comprehend them.
Case in point: Congress rewrote the tax laws in the 1980s, to “simplify” them. Guess what? It turns out that the simple tax code, which they were certain could only be interpreted one way, was interpreted in many different ways. Now, the tax code is even more complicated than it was before it was “simplified”.
Might work. Opera it seems is trying to make hard stuff – and this is a good thing overall. Haven’t tried it out yet but sure will. Just hope that there are not many broken bits in the implementation. Apart from that this thing should be a go! Way to go, Opera!
Tomcat use kar naa … way to go kya bolta hai.
They have just reinvented the Minitel…
I don’t want my computer to be a dumb terminal connected to the “Opera Unite proxy servers”.
For me the best illustration of this service is at this page http://dev.oper.../#conceptsproxy (figure 2). They want to be one of the large corporations who we depend upon to ACCESS our words, thoughts, and images.
Might work. Opera it seems is trying to make the hard stuff easy – and this is a good thing overall. Haven’t tried it out yet but sure will. Just hope that there are not many broken bits in the implementation. Apart from that, this thing should be a go! Way to go, Opera!
You don’t have to wait for Firefox to get this, it already has an extension called POW — Plain Old Webserver. All it’s missing is the services. Otherwise it’s awesome.
https://addons....efox/addon/3002
It’s good idea, but it lacks scalability feature.
What if my website become popular, how one would access my photos, videos and documents when even fully fledges web servers collapse.
I was actually expected to a P2P type of technology where the content of my site will be spread among other nodes, that would be indeed reinventing the web.
And one other thing…
I was enthusiastic with the idea that this will start an era where governments will not be able to censore the web anymore.
As this service relies on that Opera’s central unite proxy server I’m quite disappointied
Awesome business idea. P2P Cloud, not just a bunch of individual web services.
Zapr (http://www.zapr.com) has also been around form some time.
It’s a good idea and great if you use lots of computers. Similar to Tonido (and I though the sun icon that the two shadows shared was very Tonido-ish) or Sockso, but through a browser.
Smart.
Japan, South Korea, Norway, Sweeden and Denmark to name a few have some pretty large up and download speeds available to the public.
Stavanger in Norway for example has fibre to the home. Not to mention a peer to peer network where only those on fibre can join! (silly speeds)
They are looking to the future, not the shit broadband that others of us have to live with in England and Australia and America.
I wonder if they will look to port this into the mobile platform.
Could open up some interesting applications.
Equally, it would be quite an interesting platform to embed in devices around the home, office garden or wilderness.
Clearly people like many who post can set up a server tweak an iptable rule and do all the stuff which should be standard abc learning if any of us were rulers. But most non NORMAL people are intimidated by the speed of technology. I dont think today will be seen as an re-invention of the web but it could be the start of a new evolution.
We did an in-house test and it was faster to send data to our S3 data stores then to our team than it was to share it with them directly.
I could have saved you some testing time there. Of course it’s faster.
Simple question. What if my computer is down? no one can see my data?
Yup, no replication. It’s like P2P but without replication. If you’re down, your “services” are not available.
…I can see a lot of “Service Unavailable” signs if this took off. Page gets indexed, you find it in Google, click on the link, and guess what – it’s down, because some dude’s switched off his laptop. Crazy idea.
This is going to be fun…
“Hey, Lindsey, can you turn your computer back on? I can’t access your profile photos!”
I can see a lot of reasons to access your personal data this way while on the road, but there’s a reason we keep servers in data centers and not living rooms…
Installing now. Interested to see what this is like…
same things i am doing installation right now .and try what’s new features on it .Great .!
Don’t P2P software like Limewire allow you to connect directly with another’s computer and share files too?
Can’t see myself adopting the browser just so that it can act as a web server.
Companies have to realize that the “unite the web” policy won’t work. People will still try and find other services – everyone hates a monopoly. Even if IE and all start offering the service, my bet is most people would still log onto Flickr to share services
It looks like google wave might be in trouble no?
no.
You’re being sarcastic, right?
First of all, with this model you become bound to a single physical device .
On the second hand, the average non-tech user could be mislead by this model. Not sure if the “share this” paradigm of the web of these days can be translated into “share directly your hd” Not sure it’s the same thing. These days people are already thinking in terms of “my facebook data”.. “my flickr photos…”, not in terms of: “I have my personal repository on that 320gb hd which I need to constantly uploading to third parties providers… wish I could publish my hd live instead…”
And last, of course, the uptime. When I go to sleep and turn off my PC… or when Vista forces the 100th reboot…
Still, could be useful in a few cases.
Underwhelming to say the least. Can’t wait til something I’m hosting gets posted to Digg and my bandwidth is vaporized within four seconds. There’s a reason we rely on the server/client model for web traffic, and it’s because it’s robust.
Call me back when users can elect to chip in a block of hard drive space for decentralized storage/bandwidth distribution/data redundancy. Now that could be worthwhile.
It’s the same reason BitTorrent is thriving while direct P2P services go the way of the dodo.
your comments looks like an at & t sales employee
who cares about bandwidth, just don’t make it public or share only with your friends
To all the critics – just take a look at the Opera’s website. What are they promoting? Their mobile OS… What’s going to happen soon? Right, they’ll put Unite on a mobile. Now, what happens then? People sharing the information using Opera software using Bluetooth, internet, IR or anything else that becomes available then. And that’s where the idea starts to get pretty interesting. The only thing is that Opera should really make it possible to access the service using any browser and without any accounts on Opera’s servers. Then they’ll live up to their promise of the free internet.
You get it. I wonder how many people here actually tried it before they bitched. By the way, I must say Tonido looks good too.
The poster child of the anti-Green movement! Finally I have a reason to be draining the power grid when I’m asleep, away on vacation, and even while I’m running errands.
Interesting… But question is…
Will enterprise policies allow such kind of browser in their environment?
Sure, why not. Any HIPAA-compliant company would be happy to allow this to run on every single PC on the network.
wow, this will make it so much easier for friends to steal music and movies! great work! was this the point/goal?
The anti-cloud approach is the right direction but the server part of Opera Unite needs to run on a Router, Homeserver or NAS. For good reason personal data storage moves away from the 500 watt Media PC. The missing link is a free and easy to use home server operating system. http://www.neorouter.com/
yeah and when i turn my computer off, the whole idea is crushed into pieces.
There is a reason to have webserver instead of client pcs hosting stuff: Uptime + Bandwidth
privacy and security is the other issue to be solved. http://www.ther...16/opera_unite/
Privacy is exactly what this fixes.
It runs in a sandbox, so security is taken care of too.
Why so man negative comments? I think it’s great. I think people comparing it to traditional webservers have the wrong end of the stick – of course it’s inferior to them in bandwidth and uptime, I think Opera Unites’s advantage is in making it easier for the non-power users to be able to share and host relatively small amounts of data.
…they can do that already using remote servers, with 24/7 availability and no bandwidth issues. This is a gimmick by Opera and it looks like it’s failed at least with TC readers.
Who are “they”?
You mean the services that require you to surrender your files to strangers?
Maybe you should pull your head out of your behind and read about the vision behind Unite before making silly statements like that?
I agree with Issac. The average user doesn’t know what a remote server is let alone how to use it.
Opera’s failing here is to communicate the service in a way that Joe Shmoe will understand. All this talk of “servers” completely missed the point.
I’ve had 10 emails today from people asking me to explain what it all means.
It’s a great service. Once people figure out how to group it (like grouping 10-20 computers) then it will be a real killer.
I didn’t have any e-mails at all. First – because I am moving my primary domain to a more powerful server which will cost me a fraction of another PC running 24×7 at home (considering electric bills, hardware and bandwidth), while it has better CPU, connectivity and availability.
Second – because not a single person cares about Opera and their reinvention of P2P client.
this is fantastic. this solves a problem that I have.
same here. the haters are thinking too small and too big at the same time. serve up your own files to you and to close peeps who do not need the “service” online 24/7 with no downtime. easier than a shared network and works over long distances and between multiple parties.
Peer 2 Peer 2.0??
One line of thought, what security holes is this going to open up.
you are cheaters. instead Opera’s version of servive you are discussing your own.
compare the images in an article an at opera site
http://devfiles...82/operauni.jpg
No need to install Opera. It is already possible in any browser using just Adobe Flash Player, which most users already have.
For example, http://www.FilesOverMiles.com uses Flash Player to enable users to send files directly between each other. FilesOverMiles doesn’t require any additional software to be installed.
Unite is not only about sharing files – you can write services in HTML and JavaScript which will do completely different things than basic file sharing.
http://www.shar...arge-files.aspx is another service that doesn’t require and software.
I do think that this is an interesting option for small businesses and maybe individuals with excess CPUs at home.
I guessed half-right! I was thinking they’d integrate something like dropbox into the browser since that was sort of where they were already headed with giving users the ability to sync their Opera browsers. I just didn’t think big enough! (which is why, sadly, I’m not an entrepreneur)
Isn’t this just Orb (orb.com)?
Can Orb share any data? Can any browser view the data?