Though kind of partial to Firefox, I really don’t pay a lot of attention to whatever the latest web browser version is. For most things you do it doesn’t really matter.
However, Opera has just released a new version of their browser that they’re calling “Unite” because it pulls a whole lot of services together. While it’s a pretty decent web browser (though it feels different from Firefox) it can also help you set up a simple webserver, chat room and a few other neat features that run entirely off your home (or possibly work) computer.
Though it’s now comparatively easy to get a good chat room, there are times I’ve hunted for one that was private and safe for my students and I couldn’t find one. Having one running on my home computer would solve that since its existence would be known only to me (and my students), hence there would be no creepy people there that I’d have to worry about.
A webserver running on your computer can also give you a bit of privacy when sharing webpages with photos, student work, etc.
The real great part with this is that it’s all designed for the non-geek. Setup time for me was about five minutes (but I’m a bit geeky so it might be longer for you). It’s really, really simple.
The two downsides to this that I can see are that the URLs for the services are ridiculously clunky. For example, for a webserver your URL might be mycomputer.user.operaunite.com/webserver. It doesn’t exactly role off the tongue. This might be fixed in a later version of the Opera browser.
The second problem is a little more fundamental. Though most people can download to their computer fairly quickly, in most cases uploading from your computer is comparatively slow. Upload speeds (which is what will matter when someone downloads a webpage from your computer, if you follow) are quite slow in most cases. This may make your webserver, or chat room, etc seem comparatively clunky.
Despite the flaws I think Opera is on to something with this new version of their browser. Good job, guys.