Your Browser is Now Also a Server

Opera Unite allows you to easily turn your desktop into a web server and run a number of web services like photo-sharing, file-sharing, a web server, and an online media player right from your machine and access all of these services from anywhere. While this gives you control over your media, it also means that your data is only available online as long as your computer is running.

Starting a Unite server takes seconds (though you need an Opera account to make this work). Opera will assign an address to your computer based on your username. Users can choose if they want to protect their applications with passwords or if they want to make them available to anybody on the net.

Nothing New Besides Unite

Besides Opera Unite, this latest version doesn't sport any major new features. With features like Opera Turbo, bookmark syncing, and the sleek new visual tabs design that Opera introduced in the last update, Opera 10 does have a lot of things going for it. In our tests this morning, the browser was stable and fast. Even though we didn't run any benchmarks, Opera 10 felt just as fast as any other modern browser.

For more information about Opera Unite, also have a look at our more in-depth review of the service and the apps that Opera includes by default.

When Opera announced Unite, the company's PR material said that it would "reinvent the web." This is where Opera's PR went wrong and may be the main reason why people quickly lost interest in Unite. Here is what Unite really does: it allows you to easily turn your desktop into a web server and run a number of web services like photo-sharing, file-sharing, messaging, forum, web server, and online media player right from your machine and access all of these services from anywhere. If you are currently using Simplify Media or a similar service, you are already familiar with the basic idea of how Unite works. Just like with Simplify Media, you can access these services only when the program is actually running on your computer, so it's not a replacement for a hardware device like the Pologplug.

Opera currently only makes a small set of services available (you can find them here), but developers will be able to create their own services as well.

In our tests, Unite worked just as advertised. We were able to stream our music, access our photos, and serve up a simple website. We didn't test all of the available services, but there is also a file uploader that allows you to quickly upload a file to your machine at home, as well as a file-sharing service that allows users to host their own files. Another neat app is the "Fridge," where you can post sticky notes for other users to see.

You can make your services publicly available for everybody on the Internet, password protect them, or make them available only to you when you are logged in with your Opera credentials. There are obviously some security concerns to be considered when you run a service like this on your Windows, Mac, or Linux machine, though Opera obviously argues that Unite is secure.

If you want to give it a try, you can download the latest beta of Opera 10.10. Just remember that this is beta software, and things will inevitably break.

That claim is probably meant to fight back against some people's initial concerns that hosting files on their own PC will leave them open to attack. However, simply addressing security issues is somewhat missing the point about the real trouble with Unite: it's not solving a problem we actually have.

According to the interview, Tetzchner addresses the concerns of those in the security community who fear this technology that aims to put a web server on every PC. He says, "when you're hacking a single system, if you have everything that belongs to everyone in one location, you only need to break in once. If you have it in different computers it's a little more complicated. If you get into one Web server and everyone's data is in there, that's easier than getting into a million computers."

While Opera and the tech community continue to debate the technology's security or lack thereof, the rest of the tech early adopters have simply moved on. Outside of the Opera fanatics (we know who you are!), most of us either skimmed the news briefly or, at the most, may have downloaded the alpha and played with it for a bit. But did the lot of us switch browsers and start sharing files? No.

Why is that? Shouldn't this be just the sort of thing that has techies all a'twitter? What's going on?

Where's the Geek Love?

When Opera revealed the mysterious (and perhaps overly-hyped) Unite, they probably didn't get the response they expected. After numerous emails and teases about a new technology that was going to "reinvent the web," for the most part, the community response was "huh?"

Oh sure, Opera fanboys and girls got it right away as did web developers and other geekier-than-thou folks, but even within the tech community itself, there was confusion...and a bit of "bah humbug" too.

We remember reading through various blog comments where users dismissed Unite as nothing more special than a browser with P2P plugins - a statement that's only true to a point. While the technology enables P2P between browsers, it does so via a proxy server in the middle at operaunite.com. That middle service could easily be a single point of failure for the Unite infrastructure. Opera Unite's proxy goes down, you go down. Sure, that might not be any different than the cloud services we rely on now: Gmail, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, etc. However, even if one of those was to crash-and-burn, it wouldn't take our whole web of services down with it.

But Unite wants to replace just about every cloud app you use today with its own apps for file sharing, social note-posting, chat, photo sharing, and media playing...and that's not to mention how Unite wants to let you host your own web server, too. In other words, Opera wants to (partially) move the cloud back off the the web to your PC.

They even go so far as to claim that their single point of failure is an improvement on what we do today: "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," writes product analyst Lawrence Eng.

Thanks, but we'll take our numerous cloud apps over the Unite+PC combo any day.

What Problem Does Unite Solve?

When we started moving from desktop to web, initially testing the waters with email services, later moving to photo and video sharing services, and finally to social networking sites like Facebook that let us communicate and share media, the solutions being implemented were solving real challenges. Setting up desktop email was hard for non-techies (what's my email server's address? what's SMTP?). There were mailbox storage limits and attachment size limits. Letting grandma and grandpa see our digital photos wasn't easy. Getting in touch and staying in touch with our wide network of friends was downright impossible. But then these web applications came along and made it possible for everyone to use technology. They were simple, straightforward, and fun. And soon a Web revolution was underway. A real one, that is.

What problem does Opera Unite solve that could kick off the next revolution of the web? Are we having trouble with cloud services? Are we concerned that they're so insecure that moving everything via P2P through Opera is somehow better? Is Unite easier than Facebook? Than flickr? Heck, than email? No.

It's not easier for us techies by any means (especially since its tied to one browser) and it's not even close to being easy for the "regular folks" of the online world...you know, the ones who don't even know what a browser is

So security concerns aside, what is Unite doing for us that we can't get elsewhere? Anyone?

If you think we're missing the point, chime in below.

Well, we've just received concrete confirmation of exactly what that means. Their new product, Opera Unite, "turns any computer into both a client and a server, allowing it to interact with and serve content to other computers directly across the Web, without the need for third-party servers."

Unite is now available in the Opera 10 desktop browser from Opera Labs, and services run directly in the browser. Directions for setup are also available at that page.

Opera Product Analyst, Launrence Eng, writes, "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."

The first apps offered by Opera Unite include file sharing, a web server, a social note-posting app, a chat app, photo sharing, and a media player, but Eng states that much grander features and functions are in the works.

"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."

Here are some screenshots of the apps in action; click to see larger versions:

Last and kind of least, here's a rather touchy-feely video from Opera explaining in very simple terms what Unite is supposed to do to web architecture: