The technology we'll release tomorrow is quite cool and has a great potential once you realize what you've got there. But we're only humans and can't possibly demonstrate the full potential from day one.
... oh and this project has been going on for a little bit more than 4 days.
Tyberius Prime
Maniac (V) Mad Scientist with Finglongers
From: Germany Insane since: Sep 2001
posted 06-15-2009 14:44
you ....
I could've stayed blissfully ignorant and all suprised. Now the back of my brain won't stop till the 16th, thinking about this!
Full text indexing every site you ever visited?
rssifying any section of any webpage?
hyperlinks that go both ways?
what is the new big thing??!
I need to know!!!!
*retreats_screaming_and_mumbling* (yes, tp's can do that both at the same time!)
On one hand, I'm skeptical -- and besides, Greasemonkey already did it, combined with a reinvention "aftershock" from Stylish and facilitation from Firefox.
On the other hand, such a bold claim demands interest. I have interest to give. I give interest. I am interested.
What you'll see tomorrow will give people, normal people, freedom. And to honestly I can't wait for my relatives to use this.
The initial push is just to showcase some ideas and get the ball rolling.
The couple of developers, including yours truly, who worked on this have ideas we want to experiment officially and on our own, and every feedback is welcome! Anyhow you'll be able to play and experiment with this for yourself in a few hours.
DavidJCobb: The cool thing about Greasemonkey and Stylish are the user script/style management.
After more 2 years working on on off on this project, Unite is finally live.
Unite brings the cloud back to earth and puts a webserver in your webbrowser, allowing you to connect and share your things when you want, with who you want, without giving away anything.
quote:* Enables sharing files, pix without uploads, from PC
* Data can be accessed from any browser
...
Opera Software (OPERA.OL) opened a new, free service on Tuesday that enables simple sharing of personal computers' pictures, files or music with anyone on the Internet.
The new service, part of Opera's Web browser, enables direct downloading from personal computer to personal computer and removes any need for data storage at servers in the middle. Files can be viewed with any browser.
Similar technologies have been available before for tech-savvy consumers, but these have required downloading separate software, paying usage fees, or a long process of uploading content -- limiting takeup of services.
Opera has built some sharing services for photos and media into the browser but has also opened up the platform for any developers to build their own sharing services.
For the tech people, Unite is a Webserver API and File IO capabilities for JavaScript. You write a web service in JavaScript using these APIs to listen to HTTP request and respond the way you want, and can store things in a sandbox folder, and access another sandbox folder provided by the user in the properties dialog of the service, and all that is packaged like a widget ( it was just convenient to reuse the same packaging mechanism ). Your service is a daemon, with no chrome, that listens and respond to HTTP requests, can emit requests on its own to fetch data and mash up informations, ...
It's a different mind set and a little confusing at first, but once you ticked and got it, it's really simple and powerful. You've got access to HTML, CSS, Canvas, DOM, SVG, ... on your server and can manipulate things at will. For instance for the thumbnails and preview images in the PhotoSharing I check if I haven't generated the resized image and saved it in the storage sandbox and if the image hasn't changed since, if not, upon request I load the image, resize it using Canvas, export and save it as a JPEG and serve the file.
We know that the bundled services are only scratching the surface of what's possible, but finally my relatives will stop sending me and failling to send 4MB photos on MSN & Skype, and share them in a private and efficient way without losing control.
As I said, there are lots of things we want to play with e.g.:
turn your machines into your own Open ID provider
remote adminstration
files synchronization
bulk download of files/folders
turn the media sharing updside down and make it a media center with remote control via the web page so that you can play music on your PA equipement from your computer and change the play list by browsing the admin page using your mobile phone or DSi or Wii or ....
similiar idea for the Photo Sharing, it would be sweet to have a remote control page for slideshows so that you can navigate using a handheld device and project pictures on your TV, or have a Wii friendly interface ...
About the openID provider, we could even make a mobile widget that connects to your Open ID Unite service and vibrate when an authorization is requested and show you a dialog to grant or deny access to the site requesting access.
This is very interesting. I'm going to have to dig a bit deeper into it, I'm curious what possibilities it allows.
I fear for making Opera-only sites, but having a few extra features for a particular browser is never a *bad* thing, so I could see myself trying to take advantage of this somewhere..
FWIW one could make a Unite service that emits web pages using Active-X controls for use on internal networks locked in IE-land.
Of course there are special use case that require specially crafted pages but clearly we'd rather see people make services that emit web pages based on open standards and best practices that most user agents can render properly.
Hmm... Wait, doesn't your computer have to be on to send/receive data? What if you turned it off to save power? Then, any requests sent to you would be lost, if they're not being stored on a dedicated, never-turns-off server.
Perhaps Opera are trying to bring on the great energy shortage quicker than we would have liked. I hope they have some investment in emerging energy technologies then to cover this, what a coup that would be!
reisio: Opera Unite does what required several seperate software to do, and it does it this almost zero configuration. My girlfriend and relatives managed to share their photo collection without any help and without messing up the privacy settings and exposing pictures of the kids or private pictures to everyone as they did when using things like Facebook.
SleepingWolf: Weave is a synchronization service, like Opera Link, to keep some aspects of your browser in synch on multiple machines. That's not quite what Unite is, although Unite could facilitate things like that too.
DavidJCobb: Correct.
There are use cases for 24/7 services, but where Unite excel is at sharing things on the spot.
SleepingWolf: Weave is a synchronization service, like Opera Link, to keep some aspects of your browser in synch on multiple machines. That's not quite what Unite is, although Unite could facilitate things like that too.
Thanks for the clarification poi. As exciting as this is, I'm concerned about the privacy aspects.
The marketing possibilities are endless here - collecting not only all kinds of browsing habits but also sharing of music, photos, docs....
This goes much further than google or any P2P service. This information will be sold to advertisers and the bombardments of "tailored" ads will reach new heights. no?
reisio: My girlfriend knows how to find a wifi and connect to it. My mom and cousins are not there yet. Far from it. But all managed to install Opera and get Unite running from a link to the download page and some really brief explanation for my relatives who don't speak English.
SleepingWolf: No. I haven't heard of any plan to extract and/or monetize such information. Opera learnt a valuable lesson from its past of paid desktop browser. That sort of things hurt real bad. Four years later, some people still spew angry comments about Opera and completely turned their back to it.
Blaise:A clarification about the TOS. In short, this is your stuff, we do not store it. The "worst" thing we do with it is to pass it through a proxy if a direct connection between the two machines is not possible.
SleepingWolf: No. I haven't heard of any plan to extract and/or monetize such information. Opera learnt a valuable lesson from its past of paid desktop browser. That sort of things hurt real bad. Four years later, some people still spew angry comments about Opera and completely turned their back to it.
In passing I'm going to install Opera on my mom's PC since they still thankfully support 98 which FF3 no does not. Don't ask why she's using 98 - her hardware is very old.
quote:
In passing I'm going to install Opera on my mom's PC since they still thankfully support 98 which FF3 no does not. Don't ask why she's using 98 - her hardware is very old.
Linux is your friend, I've installed Ubuntu on my parents machine and they picked it up very quickly, I'm sure you'll find one that would work with your mums machine's specs very well, and at least it will be secure/up to date.
I'm kind of in the same boat as WebShaman.What will this do for the underground communities? How safe are such denizens? Court order snooping and that kind of thing?
WebShaman or SleepingWolf?
I'm concerned about privacy but I'm also concerned about marketers.
For example, with FF and Ad Block Plus I'm spared from hundreds of crap advertising banners that are no longer rendered on a page.
Does google chrome block google ads? I doubt it.
Just imagine a google browser so good that it kills all the competition. At that point they turn on all the google ads to the limit....do no evil my ass.
Crap. Thought I replied but guess not. Old age is setting in.
I guess both, Wolf. but Web mentioned pr0n and that's what tweaked my brain.
Did a little bit more reading and it doesn't really seem that 'new and improved' to me. Back in the day, I used to run HTTP and FTP servers all the time. I was admin of my own domain. I know that there are servers out there for IRC, Mud/Mush/Moo, and tons of other things, but I never did anything beyond HTTP/FTP.
However, the 'new and improved' seems to be in the form of 'easy for the masses'. I can see privacy issues, litigation, and lobbying starting up already. RIAA/DMCA getting in a fuss all over again. Predator hunters on the prowl. Fox News sensationalism. Over what? Tech that already exists but packaged in an easy-to-use form.
Tech that already exists but packaged in an easy-to-use form.
I didn't see anything new myself.
Like you said, it's just existing technology in a convenient package.
But Google was just another search engine.
Personally I prefer the "best of breed" approach to the swiss army knife.
Checking it out. I hate how it always defaults to trying to save your password, regardless of how many times you've unchecked the box in the past. Don't like how it gives you a normal looking URI that doesn't load in any other browser, should just stick to unite://. I managed to easily delete my 'File Sharing' from the panel... doesn't come back as easily. I had been linking to /admin/Cowboy... and then realized I needed to change it to 'Public', but it took me a bit to realize I had to change the URI s/admin/content/ . TOS are pretty creepy, but I s'pose since it's all virtually hosted at opera.com they have that right. I was honestly expecting complete decentralization, not a glorified my.opera.com UI, but I guess that'd be a lot more work, and wouldn't really benefit Opera. It's nice, but not enough to make me use a closed-source browser.
This is has a redone UI appearance, right? Either that or it's been that long since I bothered checking the default Opera appearance. Anyways, it looks much better than older incarnations. GJ to whoever. The black bar at the top is a little more contrast than I'd prefer, but I imagine that's easily altered (have to make GUI changes to Firefox in these days of version 3 insanity, too).
posted 06-15-2009 14:22
