Opera is yet another browser fighting for their share of Internet Explorer's majority of the market share. Just recently they released a video detailing their new project called "Unite".

Opera Unite

From the video they claim they want to take the middle man out of web applications, but from what I've noticed when I used it is that they just swapped the other middlemen with themselves.

It's still in its infancy, but the Unite project offers six different features currently. They are File Sharing, The Fridge, Media Player, Photo Sharing, The Lounge and a Web Server.

The File Sharing, Photo Sharing and Media Player could all be grouped into one as they are ways to view different files from a remote desktop, or to allow your friends to view your collection. While it's great to have this available with your browser there are far more extensive applications already made for doing the exact same thing. Another problem that I, and apparently several other people had after I read some reviews, is that it doesn't use SSL for these applications. It relies on a password feature to keep your files from the prying public which if time has taught us anything won't protect most people from shit.

The Fridge is a way for people you know to leave you notes, but again there are already better ways of doing this. From leaving offline messages on instant messengers to dropping someone an e-mail (Yes, people still use e-mail).

The lounge is a chat program to talk to your friends, but I'd hate to have to leave my web browser open 24/7 where I could have Pidgin/IRC. And I don't see myself inviting 20+ people to chat.

I have to say the Web Server is the most promising feature of this project and the one I haven't tested as much. From what I read it doesn't support PHP which is a huge no-no considering the fact that most webpages today are dynamic, not static. Plus, it's free, so the majority of anyone creating a web page assumes that their server will parse PHP.

These are just first impressions, but I don't see this as replacing the current applications anytime soon.