RutSum

Why I Think Opera Unite Is Awesome

Opera unveiled today, something awesome – Unite. It basically combines a web server and a browser. So now all you need to conveniently share your files with your friends, or even remotely access your own files from somewhere else easily is -

1) Opera Web Browser With Unite
2) An Opera account

Setting up Unite is amazingly easy. In Opera, just go to ‘Tools’ >> ‘Opera Unite Server’ >> ‘Enable Opera Unite’. You can enable or disable services like File Sharing, Media Player, Photo Sharing, Fridge, The Lounge, or Web Server from the Unite Side Panel.

When you do enable Opera Unite, you get yourself a URL, which points to your Unite page, a hub from where you or anyone else can access your files remotely. You can check out what my Opera Unite page looks like.

Note that this page will only be available if I am running Opera on my system and have Opera Unite enabled. Once I close Opera or shutdown my system, you’ll get a not available error. However, for you, this event should be highly unlikely because I rarely shutdown my machine, and Opera is almost always running on it.

I am not here to explain what Opera Unite can do, or how you can configure it, or enlist its features. If you want to know that you can check out the official Opera Unite website. I want to tell you why I think that Unite is an awesome idea and how it is better than other conventional methods of sharing files such as e-mail, hosting websites, dropbox like websites, setting up an Apache server on your machine, using DyDNS, SSH etc.

1) TOO FUCKING EASY – All you have to do to set it up is download and install Opera, and enable Unite. There you go. Now you can share practically your whole hard disk, your pictures, your music collection, even host your own website on your computer. All you have to do is keep your machine and the Opera browser running.

2) SOLVES THE DYNAMIC IP PROBLEM – One problem with other methods of accessing files on your hard disk (such as SSH) is that it requires you to know your IP address to access your machine over the Internet. With most ISPs out there giving out dynamic IPs to their customers, its impossible for you to remember your IP. Unite gives you a domain, a URL, which is easy to remember, and stays connected to your machine no matter how many times your IP changes. This is because Unite is linked to a My Opera account, therefore it always knows your current IP. You only need to remember your own URL. My URL is mac.apoorvkhatreja.operaunite.com

3) CROSS PLATFORM – Opera is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and *NIX systems. So practically anyone out there can get a web server up and running in minutes. Moreover, once you set up Unite, all you need to access your files remotely is a web browser, any browser that can render web pages. That is available on almost all systems by default. With SSH or other methods, you need to download some other tool before you can start downloading files.

4) ALL GUI, SO GOOD FOR n00bs – Fight it, but people are repelled by terminal windows and usually don’t like typing anything other than sensible English sentences with their keyboard. A really dumbed down, simple GUI interface for Unite makes it easy for n00bs to use who are looking to host their own website on their system or just share files with friends without any size limits.

UPDATE:
5) You can’t DDOS a person via Opera Unite! (Unless you can sustain exactly 13 connections per second, no more, no less, but even then it’s just takes 1 core and connection piling doesn’t happen. (No overload) [via Opera Unite benchmark]

If you liked this post, or found it useful, don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feeds. Or you can get my posts delivered to your inbox directly, by subscribing to my feeds by email. Or maybe you'd like to know what I'm doing right now, by following me at Twitter.