Prashant Dhavan is a freelance tech writer who believes the latest Opera Unite is a blaster. Here is what he has to say …

An enhanced Web browsing experience with feature-rich Opera Unite
Designed to change the web’s ‘old client-server computing model’, Opera has just released a beta version of Opera Unite. This browser-based sharing and collaboration service has been subjected to a range of security concerns. Also, businesses seeking control over copyrighted content have vehemently opposed it.

Unveiling a new Opera technology
Opera Unite promises to turn any computer or device running it into a Web server. In simpler terms, any such computer is part of the wider fabric of the Web, instead of just interacting with it. It directly links a host of personal computers, so that one can connect with as many friends at the same time. All this happens through the browser, and no additional software needs to be downloaded. It will function wherever Opera works (Mac, indows, Linux, and later mobile as well as other wireless devices).

While providing an insight into the technology on his blog, a product analyst for Opera Software, Lawrence Eng believes that among various new features Opera has introduced none filled him with anticipation as Opera Unite.

According to the analyst, Opera Unite applications can be well about anything. It’s up to companies, entrepreneurs, end users, developers, and anyone with a vision of what the interpersonal Web means, to build the next generation of applications and bring people together online in newer ways.
The key features of Opera Unite?

Let us check some key features of Opera Unite:
•    Opera Unite is positioned somewhere between a file sharing application and a personal web server, conceptually and technologically.

•    The straightforward interface is divided into panels for each service you choose to ‘host’. This versatile application platform can turn a computer into a server from which one can share photos, notes, files, music, and different sites.
•    Opera Unite gives developers an opportunity to develop applications (called Opera Unite services).
•    Its services are largely based on the same open Web standards as websites today, so creating a full Web service gets as easy as coding a Web page.
•    Opera Unite acts as a convenient tool to share vast amounts of content.
•    On the flipside, the load of computers acting as web servers will have a major impact on the traffic load on corporate networks. According to security experts, equally worrying is the impact of malicious code when a user sets files permission levels to ‘completely open’.  Opera Unite does not feature encryption, making it vulnerable to hacking.

Opera Unite is largely a collection of existing services, albeit in a simpler or more consolidated way. The initial applications offered are just simple demos like a media player and ‘messenger’ application, which replicate existing services and current online functionality by featuring them in the context of Opera Unite.

Typical applications for Opera Unite are largely personal. There are hosted chat services, and ‘Fridge’, a hosted quasi-Facebook wall for Opera users, to drop notes on.

For now there’s no video service, but Opera Unite is extensible, meaning that anyone can opt to design and add a plugin to the program’s ‘default file-serving capabilities’.

Opera Unite’s Web server is essentially a component of the latest experimental version of the Opera 10 browser. But viewers can get to access the content from any browser. Once you have downloaded the ‘preview browser build’, you can start using it by clicking the logo in the lower left of the beta browser and logging in with your unique Opera ID. Here is a video explaining the functioning of the browser …