Some odd four months ago, still in college, I was looking for some cheap yet dedicated web hosting solutions for my photoblog. Cheap; yet dedicated? Sounds like a dream world right. But apparently it was possible. Some techie friends of mine came to the rescue, and the solution is so stupidly simple that it never entered my head. Here’s how it can work:
You have a connection that lets you download and upload stuff to internet. So instead of just browsing, you can use your own computer to host content / websites directly from your own computer, making it the server. Presto! You have your own locally hosted web site.
Sounds really simple no, so why isn’t everyone doing this? Why pay for hosting solutions?
- Not everyone knows how to.
- Lack of bandwidth is a major obstacle because most popular websites need a lot of bandwidth which not every home connection can handle.
- You will need a powerful computer to handle data requests from your visitors. And also protect your back end data from hackers and other malicious content.
Enter Opera Unite: a web server on the web browser
It doesn’t really change what all I have said above, yet uses it in a very user friendly way for the average non-techie user. It is offering you to share stuff online so that you don’t have to rely on third-party services ever again, except, of course, Opera itself. Kind of a paradox, but still it should kick off well. I really do applaud the browser makers for their innovation. Can it make me jump to Opera? Let’s wait and watch.
Demo
I tried it out for like 10 minutes, and I was seriously impressed. It allows me to share photos and all kind of files; I can access my music from anywhere in the world (or can broadcast it for anyone)! I can even set up my chat servers, let other users leave notes for me and of course host web sites for me; all in simple clicks of the mouse.
And I will say this once again, I love widgets. Period.
And was pleasantly surprised to see the Unite platform based on widgets, and all those services act like add-ons for the browser. Here’s how the chat works.
You click on the widget >> It gives you a URL >> You give it to your friends >> And now everyone can chat, from any browser too!
Pretty slick. The file sharing works in the same way. There are so many other services that let you share files, but this is so much faster and easy to setup. A revelation that comes up is that Unite is giving us Freedom, and this is their USP.
It lets you do away with third party applications, the pain of using their web sites, the pain of seeing their ads, the pain of trusting them with your data. Of course, most interesting services in Unite rely on Opera servers for proxies, but it surely holds some great promise. (Check comments below)
Hats off to Opera once again for kick starting the browser wars in such a spectacular fashion, and I am loving it! They have included a complete set of APIs and are encouraging developers to make their own applications. Stay tuned for more updates. Now what you gotta do is to check out this introductory video from Opera Labs and then download Unite from here.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-omonwFkkrY
By default, you do not rely on Opera proxy servers. Your computer directly connects to another. Your computer hosts all the data. Opera does not store or transmit it using its proxy servers.
Only if, UPnP support is missing in your network, Opera proxy servers will have to be used. And a DNS server will also have to be used to resolve your domain name. But your data is in your control.
For more FAQ on Unite, see this page:
http://unite.opera.com/support/
But whats the use of this web server as we are not going to install it on static IP.Home users are not going to use it because they do not have static IP.
You don’t need a static IP to run Opera Unite. Try the simple service and share some content with your friends, and you’ll know what I mean.
Thanks. I will try.
@sagar
great response from the support team
thanks we have updated the post
Opera definitely reinvented the way we use web…..its just amazingly awesome…..tons of data can be shared in fraction of seconds…whoa!
Hands down to Opera….
In two words….opera rocks \m/