Opera Unite Video

Opera Unite Video Transcript

[ Music ] ^M00:00:03

>> The latest fad in browsers isn't a new feature. It's to proudly claim that "this changes everything." Opera's wager in this game is a client-based sharing service called "Opera Unite." Hi, I'm Seth Rosenblatt for CNET Download.com, and in this First Look video, we're checking the new features from Norway in Opera Unite. The publisher says it has plans to merge the Unite features into the main beta trunk of Opera 10, but for now, you can only get them from an entirely separate Opera 10 installer. You can access Opera Unite from the Widget bar icon that looks like a swirl. Click it to open the sidebar panel, and then double click on "home" to get registered for an Opera account. If you've already got an Opera link, or My Opera account, you can skip that step. From there, simply double click on any of the preinstalled apps to activate them. Keep in mind that Opera says that these six apps are more demonstration of what's possible rather than actual, fully functional programs. For all of them, you're given a URL to share that you can toggle three privacy levels on, public, for anybody access and edit, limited, for tighter control with a customizable alpha numeric password, and private, for only you to use. The Fridge is like a private version of Facebook's Wall. Friends can leave you messages, and you can respond. The Lounge is an interactive chat room that you host on your computer. You can determine who gets to enter by sharing he URL, or is that's not private enough, you can password protect entry. The web server lets you host a website from your desktop computer, eliminating a middleman ISP. File sharing and photo sharing are redundant services. They look the same, except that photo sharing presents files in a large icon thumbnail format, and file sharing shows a file tree with tiny, non-thumbnailed icons. The most useful of the apps is the media player, which lets you share music from your hard drive in a stripped down interface. Click on an artists name to be taken to the album name, which requires another click to get to the songs. One final click will get the song playing. It's like a slightly visual file browser, but with playback. Again, keep in mind that Unite is in Beta because it doesn't always work. Several of my CNET co-workers tested it with me, with decidedly mixed results. Individual song streaming worked, but the other functions at the top of the player were wonky at best, functional for some, some of the time. The other Unite apps also suffered from similar inconsistent behavior across different browsers. Overall, I think you'd be hard pressed to meet someone who thinks that Unite will change the way that people use web browsers, but it's an interesting tact to take in this cloud-based environment to push a product that extols the virtues of client-side serving. Of course, Opera still owns your name server here, so it's not exactly true decentralization, is it? With this first look at Opera Unite, I'm Seth Rosenblatt for Download.com. ^M00:03:03 [ Music ]