[ale] Opera Reinvents the Internet?

[aaron]

On 2009, Jul, 24, , at 7:28 PM, Michael Hirsch wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 10:21 AM, aaron<aaron at pd.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 2009, Jul, 24, , at 9:12 AM, Brandon Checketts wrote:
>>
>>> Interesting concept I guess, but I don't see it really taking off.
>>>> From a technical standpoint, I see several problems:
>> The service does not require a registered domain name for your
>> personal web pages, so it would make sense that an outside routing
>> agent would be needed. The remote access URL's talked  about in the
>> "Getting Started" video took some form of "xxx.opera.com/username".

Got "Opera Unite" working (to some extent) by stepping back to the
Opera 10 Beta (1) version from my original download.

I had let the software do an auto-update to Beta 2 on my first
attempt to run it. According to the forums, this version is broken
and doesn't present the interface (panel widget) for accessing the
Unite services.

> Sound to me like you won't need to open your router.  Opera will act
> as a proxy for you, and the services will reach out through your
> firewall/router to Opera to make the initial connection.  So users
> will connect through Opera which passes the request on to your home
> computer, then the data flows out, probably back through Opera.

This seems to be the case.  For testing I have enabled the file share
and web services for "selective" sharing. I this mode, general access
requires knowing a specific URL that ends in a "password".  Plugging
those URL's into Firefox (running on the same machine!) worked without
doing any mucking with the firewall.  Still, the connections haven't
been highly stable and the pages being presented in attempts to connect
have been inconsistent - alternately succeeding and timing out with
page re-loads. Same story doing the attempt from Firefox on another
system on my local network.  Connecting through Opera 10 on that
second system seems to be more solid.

Another GOOD thing is that the Unite services are clearly integral
to the Opera 10 browser, since shutting down the Opera application
shuts down the access -- 404 time if Opera isn't running on the
machine.  You can also Start and Stop individual services from the
Unite interface panel in the browser.

> So it won't be quite as efficient as a direct connection, but who the
> hell cares?  An you can have multiple servers in your house--one for
> each computer, all on the same port w/o trouble.
> Sweet solution.

Yup!  That's the way it's looking!

I'll leave my Opera Unite system servers up for a bit if anyone wants
to check it out.  I've a couple original music creations in mp3 format
on the file share directory and a PaperCounts web page on the the
Web server.  URL's are:

http://emac.arxion.operaunite.com/file_sharing/access_content/ 
rufusB4doofus

http://emac.arxion.operaunite.com/webserver/access_content/papercounts

... respectively.

Enjoy!

peace
aaron



> Michael