Some Assembly Required

Posts tagged with "nintendo"

Assembled in Helsinki

By velmu. Sunday, 6. August 2006, 07:35:11

Chaals just went to sleep, so I'll have the opportunity to do a post

I had the privilege of spending some time at the Opera stand in Assembly 2006. I did not have the stamina to dig out the whole event: I was a cheater and only spent friday night and came back on sunday morning. It has been an interesting to meet some employees and play around with the DS version of Opera. I also attended the seminars held by Chaals, Gorme and Balder.

There was a steady stream of people on the stand checking out products, asking about the browser and the job opportunities. Most of them walked away with a squishy ball, mousepad, t-shirt or something else, so Opera should be more visible in the finnish scene from now on

I'm sure the presence of Opera at the event was a good move: make people aware that Opera is one option for your daily browsing. In a perfect world (wide web) every browser and developer would support standards and people could use the one they want to, not the one they have to for compability reasons. Diversity, baby.

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Winning with widgets (or without)

By Charles McCathieNevile. Tuesday, 1. August 2006, 17:24:24

assembly, nintendo, widgets, swag ...

Well, we are sponsors for several competitions at the assembly, so we're putting up various prizes.

The big one is for the Browser demo competition. This year, Opera is the default browser - if you use another one, we ask for an explanation of what didn't work in Opera that you needed. Even the most useful report will win a small thank you prize. The best demo, on the other hand, wins a big cash prize. And because we're into open standards we have put up a special standards prize. The highest-ranked demo that runs in Opera without using plugins or java (there is an exception for audio only) will receive the standards prize of 500€. Even better, we will probably throw in a t-shirt! So, if you can make do with CSS, XHTML, XML, HTML, some of the cool HTML 5 features like canvas and Audio(), serious SVG support, fast Javascript, WML, Ajax, widgets, and a few other acronyms, and top the list, you can take off both prizes - well over 1000€ (and that's not even counting the T-shirt

).

Speaking of Widgets, we're running a seperate widget competition for Assembly '06. It works like this: You write a widget, and submit it for the Widget World Cup. That puts it in the running with the others in that competition, so you could win another 3000€ there. But if you come past the Opera stand and register your widget as an Assembly'06 widget, it will also be entered into the local competition. Since we had a hard time deciding what order to make the prizes, the winner picks from the prize pool, second place chooses between what's left, which goes to the third placed widget.

Oh, what are the prizes in the widget competition? Well, they include a Nokia N90 telephone (with Opera installed). And a Nintendo DS Lite (with Opera installed).

If you're desperate for Opera swag, these are both good ways to get some. We'll run a couple of little compos too - just stuff for fun.

Or you could win the ultimate prize - a job at Opera, where you get a salary, cool workmates, various kinds of loot, and maybe get paid to go to a demoparty or two (this will be my second this year

Of course I have to work while I am there, so it might be a bit different). OK, strictly speaking that isn't a compo, but since you have to apply for it and convince us that you're the right kind of person to make a better browser, it is sort of like one...

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Partying amongst network cables

By Gerður Jónsdóttir. Monday, 31. July 2006, 08:25:17

nintendo, opera, widgets, assembly

In Iceland, my home country, people usually hit the road the first weekend of August and go camping at one of the many outdoor festivals taking place that weekend. Thinking back I see before me tons of people lying in the mud doing some heavy partying. This year I am embarking on a slightly different adventure taking place in Finland. I don't think there will be much mud this time but maybe the mud is just replaced by network cables...

Hmmm, maybe time to get serious! Hello everyone, my name is Gerdur and I got asked to join four of my co-workers from Opera (Balder, Chaals, Christer, and Gorm) to Assembly '06. I have never been there before but I happily accepted the offer.

This blog was created so you guys could get some updates about what is happening around the Opera crew at Assembly. Expect me to give the not-so-serious newcomer account of the event and maybe some of the others can fill in the gaps.

So what is Opera doing at Assembly? Meeting the ones of you there, giving you a chance to try out our cool products, and maybe even trying to recruit you. Now picture me standing there with a finger pointed at you shouting "We want you!". If that isn't enough we are also arranging the Widget competition and sponsoring the Browser demo competition.

So start working on that cool widget of yours and check back regularly for updates to see what is happening and hot. Even better, come and visit our stand! Who knows, we might have something cool like Opera on the Nintendo Ds to show you. And if you are nice to us we might even let you take it for a test drive;)

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