The fourth beta of Opera Mini has been released.Amazingly, this is just a 90kb download thingy and brings forth desktop like capability on your handsets.
I am no big fan of Wireless Internet and have long held belief that tiny screens make no sense to “surf” because it’s as good as useless trying to focus on something through that. However, given the state of Broadband access, the wireless Internet via mobiles would definitely grow. And it makes sense for the operators to market their data plans effectively.
It is in the Indian context that likes of Opera Mini are enough to generate excitement. There are a huge number of blogs out there who have mentioned about their “wow” experience (not to be confused with Vista). A browser like Opera Mini would ease the pains of “browsing” to a considerable extent as compared to the present generation sucky “browsers”.
For the technical minded, Opera Mini works by pushing your web address to Opera’s servers and it compresses the web page to render it effectively on the mobile screens. There have been concerns about privacy; I feel that most of the accessed web pages are definitely kept as a “back up” for “data mining” or to correlate the preferences. I am not aware of their backend operations but then it’s a matter of trust. You do keep a back up of your email online. Imagine something like Hotmail! Trusting Microsoft?
Apart from the privacy concerns, Opera Mini actually allows to blog, surf, catch up with RSS feeds et al just like your desktop browser. This, in my opinion, is a great thing to happen because it literally opens up a vast range of possibilities. It would make it easier to develop applications like widgets et al and engaging content. Apple’s iPhone was crowing about the “zoom feature” of Safari on their handsets. This, I am told, came in from Opera’s version for Wii.
Internet is all pervasive and atleast in the “developed” part of the world, embedded browsers make sense to access Internet.
I got an email from the Opera team asking me to blog about this once the new version is out. They had specifically requested me to put up the banners online to promote their product. This is in a way a small contribution to the efforts being put in by many others in order to spread the word. indeed, Opera is the only closed source application on my desktop. This does go against my own professed claims of Open Source alone and nothing else. However, the open source “clone” Firefox sucks to the max and it makes no sense to invest my time and energy and to make it work by extensions.
Interestingly, there is no open source alternative to mobile browsers either, as good as Opera.
You could check out Opera Mini simulator in order to check the compatibilty for your web enabled handset. There is an explosion of interest online about this new application. Opera Watch links to various other blog sites around the world.
Further, if you like the application, please do consider spreading the word around.
Further details of the features on Opera Watch.
I must admit that I don’t have a data enabled handset; nevertheless, it might make sense buying one given the exciting application like Opera Mini.
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