Opera News

This week here at Opera HQ, we did some serious number crunching (and by "we" I mean not yours truly, so you can feel confident in the accuracy of the results). In this latest edition of The State of the Mobile Web, some interesting insights emerged around people's mobile browsing habits around the world: Different countries have different patterns to their surfing, and many can be divided into 'weekend surfers' and 'weekday surfers'.

Using anonymous and aggregated data taken from Opera Mini servers, we found that two-thirds of all countries surveyed are more active on the mobile web during weekdays than the weekends.

Typical "weekend countries", in terms of the total number of users, are Egypt, Iran, Ghana, Ethiopia and Tanzania, who top the list of increase in weekend users as compared to weekday users. By contrast, "weekday countries" include Romania, Belarus, Moldova, the United States and Poland, who show the opposite trend on weekend days.

Which kind of country do you live in? And are your browsing habits the same or different from the people around you?

Speaking of Mini, the world said hello to the discovery of some mini reptiles this week, with the discovery of very tiny lizards in Madagascar. Smaller than many tropical insects, the micro-sized chameleons inhabit the leaf litter of the forest floor. And while "leaf litter on the forest floor" in itself sounds like a lost line to "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe, "nevermore" as an ending would be sadly appropriate... The species' new scientific names contain references to the imminent disappearance of their habitat.

Well, I'd hate to leave you all on a down note, so let's wrap up with some more positive news. First of all: a fluffy floor mop of a Pekingese took this year's top spot at the Westminster Dog Show. Apart from that, there were more ACTA protests, the rumor mill pegged early March as the release date of the iPad3, Facebook decided that famous people don't have to use their real nameson the popular social networking site...Where will it end? Could they also be allowed to use not-real photos of themselves too??

Have a great weekend, everyone!

The days are getting shorter and there is a distinct nip in the air here at Opera HQ in Oslo... With the Norwegian winter now upon us, we decided it was time to make our offices more comfy and toasty...complete with a big pot of sausages on the stove. (Not to mention some essential interior decor as well - hi Tom!)

These cozy-making efforts were so intensive, so high-profile, that they attracted the attention of NRK, the Norwegian national broadcaster, who sent a reporter specially to our offices to get the low-down on just how we make such magic happen.

The answer, at least according to that bottle of ketchup, is the wondrous power of the Internet to generate strange loops of self-referencing sequences of events. We took a picture to prove the point. (Ah, but who took the picture of me taking the picture?)

This week we also announced the Reddit enhancement suite for Opera, quite an exciting development for both Reddit and ourselves. Check it out if you haven't already!

Speaking of big news, that other Opera confirmed something we've suspected privately for a long time - namely, that neutrinos travel faster than light. Yes, folks, science says it's true, so you can call in those bets and quit staying up late worrying about it.

Last but not least, Facebook was hit by a particularly nasty spam attack, Google opened an online music store for users in the US, and Apple issued a global recall for the 1st generation iPod Nano.

Whew! After so much Internet news, we could all do with a nap. .

Have a great weekend, everyone!