For non-technical users who nevertheless want to have access to their home computers when away from home (or easily share pictures with Aunt Sadie or whatever), Opera has announced Opera Unite:
Opera Unite is a unique technology that turns any computer or device running Opera into a Web server. In other words, your computer (running Opera Unite) is truly part of the fabric of the Web, rather than just interacting with it, and it’s something anyone can use. With Opera Unite, everyday non-technical users can serve and share content and services directly from their own computers in the form of intuitive applications.
Easy-peasy access to ones files from anywhere? I’ll be testing this out over the next few days and weeks to see how different (and better for non-techies?) this is to other remote computing/file sharing options like VNC.
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So how’s the testing going? I’ve liked using GoToMyPC for some time, and, if necessary it gives me the ability to transfer files in either direction from anywhere. How’s Opera Unite doing?
Perri, Been busier than an ACORN voter registration worker in a cemetary… Here’s what I like/dislike so far:
Likes:
Basic file sharing by password-protected folders/directories is quite good.
The “jukebox” (sharing of media files) is a nice specialized implementation that compares favorably, in my experience, with the XBox 360 media sharing facility. Easier to get to work with a wide variety of platforms, for one thing.
Opera is encouraging others to publish their own specialized apps to plug into the facility.
Easy-peasy for casual “Aunt Tilly” type of users.
Dislikes:
Not much. It has borked on me a couple of times–most likely having bto do with some problems on my end (my ISP is doing some work and causing some micro-outages every now and then), but apart from that not much at all. In fact, not at all.
It’s nowhere near as flexible–as of now–as VNC or even Logmein. Of course, those are designed to actually use the computer remotely, not just file access. For average users, whom I’ve found have problems even setting up Logmein, let alone VNC (no matter how trivial setting those up may be), this promises to be a very easy file sharing ability, and buillt into the browser itself. I can see my Wonder Woman calling me to tell me when I’m home at lunch to boot her computer so she can access files she needs at work, perhaps, or me sending Lovely Daughter the name and location of a file she needs from my computer so she can access/download it with her password. Of course, I could always just upload the files to my hosting service and give ’em a link, or choose any number of other ways to get the file to them, but this is fine, too. Nice part: now built into the browser.