Opera promises to fulfil Internet’s unfulfilled promise through Opera Unite

Opera has announced its Opera Unite technology which makes any computer a server and allowing to interact with and serve content to other computers directly through the web. So, no other server is required and thus eliminating all third party servers.

Some excerpts from Lawrence Eng, Product Analyst for Opera Software.

Of all the new features we’ve introduced over the years, none of them have filled me with as much anticipation as Opera Unite. This technology is a radical first step towards addressing what I call “the Internet’s unfulfilled promise”, which is about our ability to connect with each other and participate meaningfully online-on our own terms, and without losing control of our data.

Opera Unite is a unique technology that turns any computer or device running Opera into a Web server. In other words, your computer (running Opera Unite) is truly part of the fabric of the Web, rather than just interacting with it, and it’s something anyone can use. With Opera Unite, everyday non-technical users can serve and share content and services directly from their own computers in the form of intuitive applications.

With Opera Unite, we are giving developers a chance to develop applications (known as Opera Unite services) that directly link people’s personal computers together, so that you can connect with one or more of your friends at the same time. It all happens through the browser, so no additional software has to be downloaded, and it will work wherever Opera works (Windows, Mac, Linux, and later mobile phones and other devices). Opera provides the platform and you provide the applications-what you create is limited only by your imagination.

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.

Think of multiplayer games, from simple two-player challenges like Chess up to sprawling RPGs. And Opera Unite is not just about fun. Think about collaborative applications such as spreadsheets, documents or Wikis, which you can work on with friends and colleagues without having to host them on a third-party site such as Google Spreadsheets or installing specialized applications on a dedicated server. You could use reverse Ajax or “COMET” techniques to mean that all the updates are seen on everyone’s computers in real time; multiple people could make changes at once, without having to lock people out.

You can read the full post at Opera Developer Blog

I’ve just installed the customized Opera browser. After installing the Opera browser (You need a special version of Opera 10 browser for this), you need to visit http://unite.opera.com/. At present there are six services.