Opera, maker of the Opera web browser, has just announced Opera Unite – a feature that turns your web browser into a web server with one click. It’s hard to categorize, but the description makes it sound like a mash up of P2P, social networking, file transfer, internet relay chat, instant messaging and cloud-based technologies. Which, I think, basically means that they want to run the internet off of your computer.
Opera Unite is currently available in the beta version of the Opera 10 web browser for Mac OS, Windows and Linux, with some sample services included. I gave it a brief run and it’s an interesting concept; the media jukebox works sort of like iTunes’ shared libraries – you choose a folder of music to share, and browse the folders of other people on the network. ‘Fridge’ is a virtual communal corkboard, or the ‘wall’ on Facebook. ‘The Lounge’ is… an internet chat room. The main difference is that all the services run directly on your computer, and aren’t hosted on other servers. Great, I guess, if you’re wary about the spate of subscription services dropping left and right, or if you’re particularly paranoid about your personal data being stored on computers not in your control.
Truthfully, I can’t imagine Unite really taking off until the userbase grows significantly. Developers are encouraged to create new services, and Opera envisions multiplayer games and Wikis running on the platform. Sounds promising, but I can’t help wondering what wonders or horrors are going to be unleashed with everybody running web servers on their computers…
