Opera launch Opera Unite – a web browserver

Opera’s big news out of the box is Opera Unite – turning a web browser into a web server. The idea is an interesting one. Instead of keeping the browser at the presentation layer of the web, Opera want to use as it as a machine for sharing content.

Opera’s product analyst, Lawrence Eng explains:

At Opera, when we first talked about media applications created for Opera Unite, one idea was a simple music player, where I would play a song on my computer, and my friends on their computers would then hear the same song on their machines. That’s not a bad idea, but is it something people would truly want to use? Does it offer anything revolutionary or anything fun, like a social component, that makes it worthwhile to use?

In trying to come up with something better, I envisioned the Opera Unite Jukebox application. Instead of just choosing a song and forcing all of my online friends to hear it, the Opera Unite Jukebox will let me choose 10 songs from my collection and put it in the queue, and all 8 of my friends who are connected to me (via Opera Unite) will do the same. In doing so, we create a virtual jukebox that contains the songs we’ve all selected. The jukebox will then play the songs to all of us (in random order), creating a shared listening experience. It’s sort of like online radio but with a social component, harking back to the days of going to a friend’s house to listen to records/tapes/CDs together. It’d be great for get-togethers too, allowing everyone to be the party DJ.

Interesting premise. Like to see how Opera approaches DRM and security in the brave new world of browservers.

June 16th, 2009 at 10:37 am • Filed in Geekery



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