I Fell from the Moon

Opera Unite is Opera's way of giving you back control over the web. Instead of saving your files on websites owned by corporations, you can keep your files on your computer and share them with anyone you want. When you keep Opera Unite running on your computer, your computer becomes a website other people can browse. And this website can contain things like a music player, photo album, file explorer or a chat room. You can even create new kinds of services if you're a web developer.

Anyone can browse your Unite site if they have access to a web browser. You only need to keep Opera Unite running. Your friends on My Opera can see if you're running Opera Unite, and you can see which of your friends are running Opera Unite. You can also password protect all your Opera Unite pages, except the fridge. But since after the rush at the launch of Opera Unite, the service has been rather quiet, which brings me to my question.

I somehow haven't seen many of my friends online in Opera Unite this week. Have you gone back to Opera 9.6? Did you disable all your services? Perhaps you never enabled it. Or are you running services, but aren't getting any visitors? Please vote for your answer in the sidebar poll --> . And make a comment about your answer below. Either way, I'd really like to see more of you keeping your Unite services running when you're online.

Unite really deserves a chance, because it really is revolutionary. It gives you back the control over your content, and allows anyone to run a website. If you value freedom from the strings corporations put on the content you share, please install Opera Unite and enable some of your services. It's really easy. Just run Opera, open the Unite panel, and double click the service you want to share.

Some of you might have noticed that my blog design got borked after the latest My Opera update. This was because the community design image files from before the update were deleted. And I used one of them in my design. I fixed it now. But instead of trying to get my old design back, I decided to make my blog design integrate better into My Opera, which already was one of my intentions with the design. The menu specifically looks a bit more like the menus you can see in the community now.

I also fixed Sleek Shady. This was a simple matter of background positioning. You might also notice that the menu in Sleek Shady makes it integrate better with the new My Opera. Unexpected but convenient. More fixes to other themes are coming up soon. But it's worth a mention that Medusa already works fine without any need for a fix.

Anyway. I'm very pleased with the new changes to My Opera. I find CSS designing a tad more effective with the UI changes. I also feel the new features empower me a bit more in the community. My avatar to the top left now looks like it's part of the new design. And the community is available in my native language, Norwegian too. I almost feel like the new design is streamlined to my needs and preferences. Thank you very much, My Opera developer team!

Maybe I'll start making something tomorrow to celebrate the new My Opera.

I started a new My Opera group with a lolcat blog. Come on over an join to post your own images with funny captions.

Hi. I'd just like to tell you that I'm helping out with StumbleUpon for Opera. StumbleUpon for Opera was originally created by Melo Bichuetti. It's a menu that allows website ranking and discovery of new sites. It has a GPL licence which means anyone can edit the menu.

I'm a manager for the group. That means I post some in the blog, moderate the forums and make other changes to the group. I haven't done more for the menu than testing it and suggesting features yet.

Coxy created that sweet logo and banner.

Bluepulse impressions, part one. More than just widgets.

I don’t have just positive things to say about bluepulse. I’ve had lots of error messages. I’m not sure if the problems are in my Sony Ericsson K600i or somewhere else.


Weak signal error
This is probably the error I get the most. My phone has UMTS and my signal is usually 2/5. I’ve never had trouble with internet apps like Opera Mini while having 2/5 in signal. Perhaps the servers or the app can’t handle lags properly. I really doubt that 2/5 in signal should ruin the phone’s ability to use internet services. To stop this message I have to restart bluepulse. But it usually comes back after some time.

Buddies Messenger error
The bluepulse IM widget have had issues for a long time. And I still have the same problem with this version. Errors in Buddies Messenger also affect the rest of the bluepulse app when being in use and render most of the app unusable. The error message says the phone signal is too weak. But I suspect the problem to be either in the Buddies Messenger server(s) or in the way bluepulse runs on Sony Ericsson K600i.

Image upload problem
The first day I used bluepulse, adding images to My Place worked like a charm. I could easily add images from the upload page on the bluepulse website. But after I tried my phone’s built-in web browser to upload images, I got countless amounts of error messages. But it seems like it got fixed Thursday. Then I could finally add my photo to my account via Flickr. Now I don't get that many error messages when adding content.

Haunted chat rooms
Whoa! Are there ghosts on bluepulse? Scaaaaary!
When viewing the chat rooms a lot of rooms appear to have one person in them. But when you enter the room, that person is gone and the only one in the room is you. When you leave the room and refresh the room list. The room is empty. This is very misleading and makes people on bluepulse hop from room to room. Instead of chatting, you end up looking for someone to chat with.
Also, sometimes, when there’s activity in the rooms, suddenly, the amount of people in the room changes into 0. Then you’ll have to leave the room and look for it again. But then, the conversation is usually broken.
I also tend to wonder if there’s any moderation of the rooms on bluepulse. Some times people come in just to offend other people in the room or do other misbehavior. But there’s no way for the chatters to kick people out of the room. If IRC was used instead, moderation of the room would have been possible for the users as well. And the chat rooms wouldn’t be haunted.

The monkey
So you clicked on the link to this post and expected a monkey? Fear not! Here is one of the Opera Community server monkeys!
I wonder if bluepulse have monkeys running loose in their servers too...

Content used in this post

The bluepulse logo is from the bluepulse front page. Minor cropping done.
bluepulse.com

Bluepulse icons are from the bluepulse explore page.
bluepulse.com/explore

The server monkey picture is from the Opera Community error pages.
my.opera.com/community/error/crash.html

Bluepulse impressions, part one. More than just widgets.