The Digital Void of SPZ

Finally, what we have been working on and known for a while became public today!

From Nintendo press release;

On Dec. 22, Nintendo and Opera Software bring the Internet to the living room couch with a free trial version of the Opera Web browser. Wii owners with a high-speed Internet connection can download a free trial Opera browser to activate the Internet Channel of the Wii Menu and begin surfing the Web.

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The final version of the Opera browser will be available at the end of March 2007, and will be free for all Wii owners to download through the end of June. After June 2007, the browser will be available for download in the Wii Shop Channel for 500 Wii Points.

Edit: It is now available, so go to the Shop Channel and download it free!!! I had a quick go at it, quite weird to be uisng it outside of debugging it at work

On the Opera site we have published three screenshots, does anyone recognize one of them?

Here at work I've been working for quite some time now on the Opera browser for the UIQ3 platform;

Ronneby, Sweden - Oct. 04, 2004
Opera Software and UIQ Technology, a fully owned subsidiary of Symbian Ltd., today announced that they have selected Opera to be the default browser in UIQ's UIQ 3.0, the new release of the UIQ Platform that is expected to be commercially available in Q4 2004.

It is quite the challenge, with it being Symbian 9 as well as UIQ having a whole new architechture, and recently the Sony Ericsson M600 hit the shelves making it the first UIQ3 device out there (closely followed by the P990). Here is a review of the M600, and some quotes related to Opera on it:

The M600 web browser is powered by the most advanced mobile browser ever created Opera Browser, Opera web experience in small screen devices is unmatchable, and if you looking for any mobile device with the best web experience always look for Opera logo in the box.

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With the high-speed 3G mobile internet access you are in for a desktop experience in the M600 screen. I remember a lot of Treo users specially users trading in the stocks market use to complain a lot that they can’t access the java web-portal to see their stocks status, well, with the M600 Opera browser (with HTML 4.01, xHTML 1.0, CSS and Java script (ECMA script), WAP 2.0 support, and SSL/TLS security protocols) you can do just that, and amazingly the Opera browser support tab browsing as well just like in your Opera desktop version of the popular browser, so you can keep your stock market update page open and start a new page to check your email or open a page for each of your main stocks, now how cool is that!?

So make sure to check out some UIQ3 action if you have the opportunity, and don't forget that the Sony Ericsson W950i will hopefully be out Q4!

Opera9 is now available for download. For those who read my post about the beta release will already know about some of the new features, such as widgets support, BitTorrent, content blocking, tab preview, source viewer, site specific preferences, customizeable searches and much more. Also for powerusers, the address opera:config should open up a whole new world of options (with a guide here).
Digg it!

Nintendo today renamed their next generation gaming console, thus far going under the codename "Revolution", to Wii.
From http://revolution.nintendo.com:

Introducing ... Wii.
As in "we".
While the code-name "Revolution" expressed our direction, Wii represents the answer. Wii will break down that wall that separates video game players from everybody else. Wii will put people more in touch with their games ... and each other. But you're probably asking: What does the name mean?
Wii sounds like "we" which emphasizes this console is for everyone.
Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. Just Wii.
Wii has a distinctive "ii" spelling that symbolizes both the unique controllers and the image of people gathering to play.
And Wii, as a name and a console, brings brings something revolutionary to the world of video games that sets it apart from the crowd.
So that's Wii. But now Nintendo needs you.
Because it's really not about you or me.
It's about Wii.
All together Wii will change everything.

Ingenious move, or worst name ever? Time will tell whether it works and wii all love the wii thing. Regardless it is time for a long wiikend, monday being May 1st wii have the day off!

Edit: Since it is now official, I can also share that Opera will be installed on the Wii as a built in browser
Also, you can see Nintendo's E3 presentation of Wii here!

Finally, the amazing Opera Mini is available all over the world! For those unaware, Opera Mini is a smaller version of Opera that works on all phones which have Java which means pretty much every phone out there now.

Opera Mini™ offers the same speed and usability as the renowned Opera mobile browser, and uses Opera's Small Screen Rendering™ technology to provide access to the Web. It has all the features expected of a browser, and more, such as bookmarks, browsing history, and ability to split large pages into smaller sections for faster browsing.

Another great feature is the serverside functionality of Opera Mini. Compression and manipulation makes sure that when downlaoding a site, the end user only needs pay for downloading a fraction of the page as most of the fluff will be stripped out even before it reaches your phone. Also makes sure the server does most of the work, making it run smoothly even on low end phones with little internal resources. Increased speed and decreased price, can't complain?

Instead of requiring the phone to process Web pages, it uses a remote server to pre-process the page before sending it to the phone. This makes Opera Mini™ perfect for phones with very low resources, or low bandwidth connections.

So wherever you are, if you have a mobile phone which runs Java apps give it a go. There are two ways of getting Opera Mini, you can either go to http://mini.opera.com and download it directly or go to this page to get the SMS numbers you can use in your contry to have it sent to your phone. It couldn't get any simpler, or better.

Abandon that crappy built in wap browser and grab the entire web by the, eh, cohones

That's right folks, you read it here first (probably not). As of 09:00 hours Norwegian time today (GMT+1), Opera for desktop platforms is free! There still is the possibility of purchasing Premium support, but other than that Opera for the desktop platform, whether it be Solaris, Windows, Mac, FreeBSD or Linux, is now absolutely free. No more banners or ads, ever again!

In other words there are now no good excuses not to use the worlds best and fastest browser

Visit the Opera homepage and download your free version of Opera 8.50 today, and you will not regret it. You certainly have nothing to lose

Related links: Official Opera press release, Opera: why free?, Opera 8.50 changelog, Key features in Opera 8.

Edit: The stock seems to have risen quite a bit the last few days after Opera became free, so here is a live ticker:
[img]http://www.infront-web.net/html/iwt.dll/chart?width=500&height=170&ticker=OPERA&period=0