Opera India

Bruce and I are in the middle of the Opera India University Tour, and haven’t exactly been getting the opportunity to blog a lot. However, in the next few days you’ll probably see a lot of posts from us, starting with this one.

A few days ago, Opera was in Mumbai, where we had a fantastic time. We presented a seminar at VJTI, and later had a community meetup at the Hard Rock Cafe.

At the meetup, I had the pleasure of meeting some familiar faces, and some new faces who were equally awesome. Case in point, Kaushik, who made this awesome card



At the end of the meetup, we were given a questionnaire to complete, and we couldn’t resist adding a little geek humour.



Bruce was taught a little bit of hindi. We taught him that the hindi equivalent of ‘Hello, how are you?’ is ‘Tum bahut khoobsurat ho. Aati kya khandaala?’ . I hope he doesn’t get beat up if he tries that line with an indian woman (and if trying that line with an indian guy, I hope he doesnt actually end up in khandala!)

Once again, a big thanks to everyone who came, and I look forward to visiting this fantastic city soon.

More photos here.

Ok, so here is the challenge: Make an X-Widget (AKA cross device widget). An X-widget is a widget which can be used on PC/Mac computers as well as Mobile phones. It can be a game, a shopping app, anything you like! The best ones will win some cool cash...

• 1st Prize: $5000
  
• 2nd Prize: $2000
  
• 3rd Prize: $1000
  

T-shirts and $50 Amazon gift cards for the first 20 qualified entrants. The best weekly widget will be rewarded with a $300 Amazon gift card. Theres a total of $10,000 of prizes up for grabs!

If your X-Widget is among our top picks, we will promote it on widgets.opera.com and you might also find it bundled in our next widget product release!

Head over to the widgets blog for more information!

Hey all!

We are organizing a meetup of Opera fans in Delhi on the evening of Oct 9 from 7 to 9 PM. It will be great for us in Opera to interact with real Opera fans.

If you are in Delhi or NCR and would like to come to the event, then please RSVP by sending a mail to

shwetankd [at] opera.com

For the people who come, there might be some other special surprises as well

The event detials are as follows:

Venue: "Ruby Tuesday", 14-15 Community Center, PVR Anupam Complex, Saket.
Time: 7 to 9 PM
Date: Thursday, October 9

Update: Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO and Co-Founder of Opera, is in India during that time and will be coming to interact with fans at the event as well!

We can only accomodate a fixed number of people, so RSVP soon or seats may run out!

Hello everyone. I'm Siddhartha, the new intern at the Opera India Office. And I just felt this need to give you a more personal insight into the Opera India gang.

Well, the month started with Vivek on a mission to save the world in 4 mins. The Madonna bug had got us all... But we (he mostly) did conquer it, only to realise our friendly neighbourhood pappu... hadn’t figured out how to dance. And well... nothing much has changed in that department since. I promise i will keep you updated.

Well, moving on, Jaswinder is all set to go the Yankee way. And all of us here have our own evil interests of getting goodies smuggled out of the states through him.

Anil, rock solid on his Enfield, just narrated to us the other day, the story of his "Roadies" audition few years back... well... the details are too gory to write about here... all i can say is, the day didnt go well for one unnamed, flamboyant gentleman... And Anil of course had the last laugh. So, next time you feel like spamming him... give it a second thought. (Issued in public interest!!)

We have all begun to have doubts that Hari has a dual personality. He is Hari by the day... and a bug fighting Super hero by the night. Who never sleeps... never takes a break. Just crunches through software bugs, and makes the net a safer place for all of us. He is seldom seen outside his QA realm, though our sources have confirmed he has been humming the latest bollywood numbers recently. Do we have a story here?? We will have to wait for this one.

Sagar, is a famous man now. The Norwegian national paper, DN, published his interview, on the growing Opera usage in India. Well, looking smart is the least we can say about the footage. For those of you who can read Norwegian, here's the article and the interview video. And for others, we have the Google translator after all (English translation).

Well, as for Arvind, he has been mysteriously getting better at Ricochet Robots, by the day. And no matter how much he tried, I still haven’t figured out how to get the robots bouncing the right way. I'm still trying to find a rule that says, interns are supposed to suck at the game.

And about me, my first office experience has been amazing. Though it’s like spoiling the kid, because I wonder any other office anywhere is going to be this professional and this unpretentious at the same time. For the first time in my life, people around me are cracking technology jokes I don’t get. Damn!! We in college still got a long way to go.

Long hours have been spent into intensively planning the next team trip. To a secret fun destination. 100 points to anyone who can guess the right place. Please leave the answer in the comments, and we will get back to you with our detailed points calculation table. Not to let you down, I currently have 10 gazillion points and will soon catch up with board leaders Navjot and Shwetank, who have been in Oslo a long time. We miss you guys!!

And I of course cannot miss out on the latest addition to our team. The Opera Kestrel 9.5. The latest offering from the Opera armoury, has been a much discussed about member of our team. Wish all software was equally beautifully engineered...

This brings us to an end of this episode of Opera.in news... Will BRB....

The Opera India team finally moved into its own private office this Tuesday!


Check out some of the moving in day photos.

Wooohooo!!

More updates and pictures coming soon....

Update:
Some more new pictures added.