Opera has released a new version of it’s web browser Opera 10.  Included in that release is a technology that they are calling Opera Unite.  Unite brings services like file sharing, media streaming and sharing, and collaboration tools to your local computer instead of hosting them on the web. 

Setting up all of the services was very simple.  I created a Opera account and then was able to get everything set up in just a few min.

File Sharing

The file sharing allows the sharing of a folder in three different ways.  Public, Limited, and Private.  Files can be shared by sending a unique URL to the people that you want to allow to have access to the files.  If the Access control is set to Limited a password is required for the users to access the files. 

Fridge!

This feature is a place to leave notes.  I am not really sure why you would use this instead of the notes feature already built into Opera.  What this would do is allow others to post notes for you to see.  I am still struggling to see why I would use this…

Media Player

I have found this to be the most useful feature of Opera Unite.  It is the ability to access my music library from anywhere.  This does not work when your company blocks streaming media on their network.

Photo Sharing

The photo sharing feature works just like the file sharing.  The features woks the same way that file sharing does.  There appeared to be very little difference. 

The Lounge

The Lounge is a chat room that can be shared out to users without the need to sign up for a service like Google Talk(Gmail), AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, etc.  It is limited in functionality to text chat only.  There is no option to share images, video, or other multimedia.

Web Server

I did not test this feature out as I have a server that I host all of my sites on.  This would allow a user the ability to share a webpage they created.  This implies that the user knows how to create a web page.  For the more advanced users it seems that there is no PHP or MySQL support either.

Conclusion

I did not have any problems with my user experience with Opera 10’s Unity.  Setup was straight forward and simple.  I was up and running in just a few min.  I did find it lacking in functionality for power users and see almost no use for it in and enterprise solution.

Unity claims that you can share without handing over your data to anyone else.  While this is true in part the only way for you to get to your data is to connect to the Opera servers.  The Opera servers hold all of your destination information and send the request to your local computer.  This model is similar to the way that P2P applications work.  Opera has taken a fundamental shift to extend ‘server’ capabilities to the browser but at the present it will not take over my browser and server needs.  I look forward to viewing the way Opera is going to extend this product in the future.