Comment Feed for Opera Unite (Coffeehouse on Channel 9)

Re: Re: Opera Unite

Bent Rasmussen — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:08:48 GMT

Well for us with fiber it's fine ;-)
Fiber is becomming increasingly commonplace here.
And diversity is great - as Charles says: Welcome Change ;-)

Re: Re: Re: Re: Opera Unite

Bent Rasmussen — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:05:46 GMT

You mean HomeGroup? Works locally of course but this is over the net.

Re: Re: Re: Opera Unite

intelman — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:33:42 GMT

Live Sync has messed up so many things for me. It made two of every file for my music collection. When I deleted a file it would sync back from my desktop.....

Luckily with Windows 7, you can stream music now ;)

I will have to try using sync as a file sharing method. Screw IM clients.

Arguably, Sync is nice. As is Mesh.

Re: Re: Opera Unite

PaoloM — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:12:27 GMT

Live Sync + public folders.

Problem solved.

Next? :)

Re: Opera Unite

intelman — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:08:05 GMT

Unite is sorta neat. There is no good way to send files between PCs. Email does not work, and most IM apps suck at traversing routers. AIM and Google Talk seem to to the best job. Skype and Live Messenger are so so. Live is just annoying, blocks a lot of files and censors URLs and Skype is just slow.

Maybe unite would make sharing files easier? No one has solved it yet.

Re: Re: Opera Unite

AndyC — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:00:17 GMT

If this doesn't come with full blown Group Policy support to disable/restrict it's use then a lot of corporates will be pushing for a blanket ban on the Opera browser, even if they currently allow it. It's just way to much of a security risk. So bye bye to a bit more of Opera's market share.

Re: Opera Unite

dahat — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:40:16 GMT

Color me unimpressed.

They surely paint a grand and rosy picture... I just don't see Opera being able to deliver on it, especially in environments where there are routers which aren't the most friendly to incoming requests... unless their line of “that doesn't require servers belonging to strangers” doesn't include servers run by Opera.

Maybe I'm just blinded by the kool-aid and mind control chip... but for wide scale P2P and distributed applications and data... I see a lot more future to Mesh and Azure for these sorts of things outside of the browser and in a form that more devices and clients can take advantage of without being tied into a specific client application (yes I know this isn't fully true with Mesh where it has a desktop app, remember that it is optional).

I remember back in the day there were several versions of ICQ that had a built in web server for similar purposes... and even then it didn't work the best as most people were still dialing up to the internet and thus weren't always the most reliable as people would need to make a phone call from time to time or worse... reconnect due to a dropped call or other timeout.

In these energy conscious times, more and more people turn off or hibernate their computers when they aren't using them (or at least when they are sleeping). This is made doubly true when more and more people are buying laptops instead of desktops, leading to even more shutting down and sleeping.

P2P (like IM) can work great for real time communication... assuming all interested parties/devices are up and connected at the same time... if that's not the case you require some third party to cache those messages to compensate... and from the sounds of it they don't do this.

Rather than put on my Windows Home Server Hat (which is taking so much energy to resist)... I'll just say that what appears to be the biggest lacking feature in Unite (aside from almost certain issues related to routers, assuming home bandwidth is free, requiring Opera servers to be in place (at least for DNS, if not more), and seemingly no cloud caching (and that just being what I can determine from what they've announced))... is there being no quick and easy way to share content in the home where multiple PCs are more and more common... and don't even get me started on trying to use devices that don't support Unite to access the data.

Re: Re: Opera Unite

LeoDavidson — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:57:08 GMT

Talking to a friend about this changed my mind a little, after my initial reaction.

I suppose it's not a bad thing for people to have the option of installing a really, really easy proxied web server for when they want to share some files to a handful of people, without having to upload them somewhere. And it doesn't require anyone to use Opera as a browser.

I still can't see it being used a lot, and I don't think it deserves the hype it's been given, but it's not a bad option for people to have so long as it's not used for anything huge/popular.

Re: Opera Unite

LeoDavidson — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:59:24 GMT

Urgh. Another idea from the "bandwidth is free" brigade.

I guess for sharing low-volume personal stuff there's nothing wrong with the idea. It is still too much of a pain for people to set up a personal website. (Then again, most people don't have to these days with services like Flickr, Blogger and Facebook.)

If this ends up being used to host anything large/popular, though, then I think it's just going to increase the "bandwidth bubble" which is going to burst at some point. US internet users are complaining about 250GB usage caps being introduced (and places like UK/Australia have put up with much worse since day one) and I can't really blame the ISPs at this stage. (Not that the ISPs are perfect in every regard, but there's no such thing as a free lunch.)

Time was when half the bandwidth was paid for by whoever hosted the content. Now we're seeing more and more technologies move that cost on to the ISPs, as if it's free. (Obviously I'm massively simplifying the way the money is distributed here, but the fact remains that before people paid to host stuff and with P2P that money disappears while consumers still expect to pay the same as they always did for their internet access.)

As I say, for small-volume, personal stuff it's fine. But we've seen huge volume corporate loads use peer-to-peer models and I think that is, to use a UK phrase, taking the piss. For example, the BBC iPlayer tried to palm off its distribution costs on ISPs by making the thing distribute subscription TV via peer-to-peer. I find that ridiculous, and it was even more ridiculous that by default it would upload content 24/7 unless the user configured the background service. Another example that springs to mind is Konami distributing game updates for Metal Gear Solid 4 via bittorrent. If I am paying for content I expect not to pay to distribute that content, unless it's subsidised (which it never is).

(On the other hand, if something is given away free or very cheap then I don't mind P2P. As a good example, Nine Inch Nails released some records for sale online in MP3 and FLAC and they paid for the hosting, as they should have. But NIN also released some of the multi-track recordings in wav format for people to play around with for free and used P2P in that case. It was free so fair enough.)

Some of our upstreams may still be free for the time being but I can't see that lasting if more and more stuff moves over to P2P.

(On the flip-side, I suppose there is a positive effect to P2P as well in that it can get you some free local caching if the protocol is done right and the data is popular.)

EDIT:

I wonder how big the overlap is for people who:

Use (or could put up with switching to) Opera.
Need more than Flilckr/Blogger/Facebook/etc.
Aren't technical enough to install Apache (or whatever).

This could be exciting for all five people in that group! :-)

Re: Opera Unite

Tommy Carlier — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 07:55:02 GMT

A lot more info on unite.opera.com.

Re: Opera Unite

blowdart — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 07:48:09 GMT

Yea. Because hosting a web site from your laptop isn't going to open up all kinds of new security problems.