Linked by Kroc Camen on Fri 18th Sep 2009 18:51 UTC
You all know that I don't particularly like Opera. I find the product to be lacking polish, over-complicated and without the marketing pizazz that has made Firefox a household name. That's just my personal opinion, and that opinion has garnered many complaints of unjustness. To that end, to present a fairer discussion I would like to put a simple question to the community: "What should Opera do?".
Permalink for comment 384978
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/19/13 23:02 UTC, submitted by M.Onty
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/19/13 22:28 UTC
"A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."More News »
Sponsored Links
Member since:
2005-12-04
The situation in America during the 90's was vastly different though. Many people's experiences of computers, and the web was through corporate desktops that they had no control over. Due to IE being easier to manage in a networked environment, a culture of IE-based infrastructure sprang up, including the dreaded Intranets and IE-only websites.
As a general rule, corporations are slow to adopt any piece of new technology. In the late 90s, IE was evolving at a break-neck pace. It was bundled with updates to the shell, clearly aimed at end users. I don't think it's really true to say that people were "forced" to use IE4/5 due to corporate environments on any scale. They were nice browsers for their time - assuming you had the hardware to run them, which was more likely true in the US than many other places.
It was Firefox (and more-so the grass-roots movement to unseat the stagnant IE and the severe damage to the web that it had caused) that changed that IE-dominant mindshare.
Again, remember timelines. IE entered hibernation with IE6 in 2001. In 2002, Mozilla 1.0 launched, and was largely ineffectual. FireFox 1.0, which was really the first to attack a "stagnant" IE, didn't start until November 2004 - prior to that point, IE was not stagnant.
For a time - a long time - IE was the best browser on the market. This is what helped to maintain it on top of usage for such a long period.
If Opera had had the right marketing at the right time, they could be where Firefox is now.
Opera was the only player in the market trying to monetize the browser. This put it at a serious disadvantage to Mozilla, which transitioned at the time from an AOL-funded venture to a nonprofit. It is hard to get market share with commercial (or ad supported) browsers when competitors have no such restrictions; and it is hard to have a good business without market share.
Opera ended up chasing market share and relying on indirect revenue instead. Its current financials imply that revenue is dominated by search agreements and mobile products; desktop browsers are merely an enabler to better mobile support. (If this sounds familiar, consider why Safari was ported to Windows.)
Which brings us to...
Microsoft (IE) - Ultimate goal, sell Windows; IE required to prevent web commoditization
Apple (Safari) - Ultimate goal, sell iPhones/Macs; Safari required to ensure support for platforms with low market share (both direct, and from web authors)
Opera (Opera) - Ultimate goal, sell phones; Opera on desktop required to provide support for web authors to be compatible with Opera phones
Google (Chrome) - Ultimate goal, sell web services; Chrome required to commoditize web, enable Google to sell internet devices, and to influence direction of web standards/support in its favor
Mozilla (FireFox) - Ultimate goal, ?; FireFox required to continue Mozilla/Netscape legacy...?