Opera Unite turns your computer into a server — is that a good thing?

June 16, 2009 | Anthony Ha | Comments | |

opera-unite

Browser-maker Opera announced a new service today that it says will “reinvent the web” — Opera Unite, which basically turns your computer into a server, meaning that you can directly share content and communicate with your friends on the web, rather than going through a third-party service. It’s a cool idea, but also one that sounds like a very mixed blessing.

The early version of Opera Unite released today includes six services — file sharing, a web server for running entire web sites, a media player, photo sharing, “The Lounge” for chatting, and “The Fridge” for leaving notes. Again, all of the data and services remain on your computer, rather than on servers run by another company. You also control the privacy settings, meaning that the content can be made available to the entire web, or to just the people you provide with a password.

A lot of Opera’s press materials revolve around the idea of “empowerment,” and that’s not just marketing speak — you give up a lot of ownership and control when you allow your content to sit on someone else’s servers. Hence the concern from users when services like blogging site Pownce and website hoster Geocities get shut down, creating the need to migrate those posts and pages elsewhere, or else watch them disappear from the web.

Unfortunately, this empowerment comes at a big cost: Since the data is accessed from your computer, once your computer goes offline, so do your web pages, or shared photos, or whatever.

In a way, Opera Unite sounds like the very opposite of what companies are trying to do with cloud computing. When you access applications in “the cloud” (i.e., online), the device (i.e., your computer, or your laptop, or especially your netbook) you’re using to access data or services doesn’t matter, and the availability of servers from Google, or Amazon, or Twitter is paramount. With Opera Unite, it’s your computer that’s paramount. I guess this model might make sense for businesses or consumers who have desktop computers that are on  and are connected to the web 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Then you could use other devices, like laptops and phones, to access those computers remotely.

On the other hand, for people whose only computer is a laptop that frequently goes on and offline, this makes no sense whatsoever. And that includes, um, basically everyone I know.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • Alex
    Hi, Anthony

    "...for people whose only computer is a laptop that frequently goes on and offline, this makes no sense whatsoever."
    Think about in the same way as of an instant messenger. If you are not online - your absence is visible there if you are - your presence is visible.

    IMHO this is not a REPLACEMENT of the web it's for the real-time collaboration.
  • A fair point -- it's probably overstating things to say Opera Unite is completely useless. But I certainly think its usefulness is much more limited that Opera suggests.
  • From reading a few artlcles and Opera's own releases, it seems that actually one's content is served via a proxy server --- really, a giant cloud operation being run by Opera. What they're offering seems to be a new "view" for file synchronizing between one's computer and the cloud --- using an interface that's perhaps nicer and more feature-rich than, say, DropBox's public folder or FTP or whatnot. The _impression_ might be that one is serving material directly to the web, but in fact, one is operating via the "Opera Unite Proxy". They've made a small leap in the right direction, but are being pretty deceptive with their "evil server towers".
  • Scott
    In a way Opera Unite sounds like the very method of what individuals are trying to do with peer to peer networking.

    However, this is actually not the case, which Opera even admits to in their own marketing material:
    http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-unite-...

    So much for freedom from "servers belonging to strangers" or not being at the "mercy of middlemen who control the servers of the world"

    What a laugh!
  • Wolve
    If you read the blue info box below that, you'll see that they did include a method for direct connect, through UPnP, but that have set up proxy servers for people who don't have access to it, such as those (like me) leeching off of a friend's network that can't set up forwarding through the router.

    Opera Wrote:
    -----------------------
    Note that the proxy is really only a fallback mechanism, to ensure that data can be delivered in case NAT traversal fails. Opera Unite has support for "UPnP", meaning Universal Plug and Play, which allows you to share your data using direct connections to your computer, if available. This can make loading speeds for your services faster, as they will bypass the proxy server. However, as it is up to each service to load content using the direct connection, it may not always run services faster. UPnP has no authentication mechanism, and assumes that local systems and their users are completely trustworthy.