I downloaded the latest build of Opera so that I could test out the recently unveiled Opera Unite. P2P file sharing has been around for awhile, but merging the concept with the browser so that file access is 100% browser/web-based is pretty great. No more weird network setup issues and all the other quirks that come with computer-to-computer connections. Plus, there is significant opportunity for developers to build Unite apps that integrate nicely with other web services.
My only gripe is what you see in the image above. The way Opera Unite works is that you can choose to share specific folders on your server (i.e. your personal computer). You can then share the URL with friends so they can access your files within their browser - either by emailing the link to them yourself or using the “Send this URL to share the files” feature. I was very surprised to see that the 4 options listed for “Use a web mail service” are Yandex, Fastmail, Opera Web Mail, and Mail.ru. (You only see Yandex because I wasn’t able to keep the drop-down menu expanded while doing a Grab for a screenshot)
I was able to get around this by selecting “Use system default”, which for me is configured to my Gmail account. However, I could see this as confusing users who are likely using Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, or even Hotmail.
Going back to the feature itself, Opera Unite is a different perspective on content. With all the noise about the cloud and services hosting your content, Opera wants to bring that power back to the users with the stance that it is YOUR content after all. It’s an interesting take, and you definitely aren’t bound to 3rd party terms. But what about reliability of file access? People put their computers to sleep or don’t keep them on all the time. Also, if you thought there were privacy concerns about storing your data in the cloud, I can only imagine what people will holler about with Unite. Although you have to specifically select folders to make public (and you can also turn on password-protected access), people will think “Oh no, now anyone can access my personal computer!!” I wonder if people will perceive 3rd party cloud services as more secure than letting people have any level of access to their own computers.
In any case, I tried it out for a subset of pictures of my pug Nickey (as you can see from the screenshot).
UPDATE: It turns out you need to have an instance of Opera always running on your machine in order for people to access your files. Grrr.
