Wednesday, 17. June 2009, 13:59:28
June 16 arrived and we finally discovered what Opera cooked for us. As it's usually happening with much hyped events, some people felt disappointed -- "reinvent the web" was probably a bit too much as a promise
since Opera Unite as a whole could be just seen as a mix of already existing technologies.
But I try to look a bit more far in the distance. Ok, it was too much hyped. Ok, it has some drawbacks. But let's think about what it could become in future, if more services are added and if more and more people can afford having a broadband and, who knows, maybe a small dedicated machine like an Asus eeepc Box, or something even cheaper. Such technologies are existing since a lot of time and right now we can say Opera Unite is only a way to put them together and make them more accessible to the people; but I think that this could be the starting point for something that could really reinvent the web.
My Opera Unite :As you can see, I added an Opera Unite banner to my blog (the design is still in progress), from where you can spot which services I am running; the updating of the banner relies on manual html editing, though.. I hope this will be auto in future
I added a photo gallery with some of my artworks, a fridge and a media player that right know only contains 2 mp3s I recorded in 2005 -- they are noisy post industrial improvisations, it was the time I was learning to use Sony Acid as a multitrack software, so I basically recorded a track, then played it back and recorded a new improvisation over it, etc. Dirty stuff but I think that it features some nice musical ideas
(the 2 guitars one is made with an acoustic guitar that is plugged to an overdrive for the solo, while the 3 ones is completely played with my electric and some overdrive and delay).
Request : I have a first critique/request about Opera Unite : please give us a way to make people know when we are online and our services are running. Some way that can also be sent as rss feed maybe, and sent to a twitter account etc. For Opera Unite to work we need people to access our data when they are available, and we are needing to be able (if we want) to make our online status available to who we want. What about a new page in our my.opera account settings or in our unite homepage, from where we can chose if to make our online status notified and the ways to get it done?
Another request :Any chance of having more than 40 chars on a fridge note? Something like a "standard" twitter-like 140 would be great. I also think it would be awesome to have the chance of putting photos on the fridge, provided they are hosted on an Opera Unite service or a my.opera account
Ok I go back to working on my sketches now! Let me know if you are having some Opera Unite page, so I can go and take a visit
EDIT : the font for the fridge is cool but not readable, especially when you write more than 2 words... please guys put there something easier to read!!! just go
here and download "fridge arial"
EDIT : I noticed
Media Player service all services except the fridge are often stopping responding and the page is not accessible till the service is restarted.. any info about it??
WIDGETIZE