last100 » Opera

Opera wants to put Internet widgets on the TV too

Steve O'Hear — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:17:55 +0000

Opera, the Norwegian company behind the desktop and mobile web browser of the same name, wants to be a major player in the nascent Internet-connected TV space.

Like Yahoo’s ‘Widget Channel’ or the boutique gadget maker Chumby’s own platform, Opera’s newly released Opera Devices SDK 10 is touting the ability for TV and set-top box manufacturers to add Internet widgets to their feature set, along with full web-browsing if required.

The widgets on display in a video demo published by Opera (embedded below) take on a familiar look and feel and pull in content from all of the usual suspects, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Amazon etc. While the Twitter example shown perhaps typifies the hopes pinned on widgets on the TV: the ability for viewers to pull in and publish web content contextual to their viewing experience, in this case status updates to and from their social network. Swap social network for shopping cart, Amazon for example, and it’s not hard to imagine the potential business opportunities.

On the other hand, if Fox TV’s recent Twitter experiment is anything to go on, perhaps this whole Internet widgets stealing screen real estate on the TV is a bit of red herring. Although at least one market survey, which we reported on earlier in the year, suggests that consumers do have an apatite for Internet widgets on the TV and are willing to pay for such functionality.

As for full web browsing on the TV? Well we all know how that worked out the first time round, albeit in a predominantly dial-up era.

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Video: Could the Nintendo DSi become the second mainstream WiFi tablet?

Steve O'Hear — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:05:50 +0000

Following Apple’s iPod touch, could Nintendo’s revamped handheld games console – the DSi – become the second “mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform”? That’s a claim that the company’s first attempt – the DS Lite – could have made if it wasn’t for the crippling speed of its otherwise innovative dual screen web browser.

On Nintendo’s original device, web pages simply render far too slowly, and as I noted at the time, the company didn’t even bother to offer the Opera web browser on-board the console itself. Instead, the software came stored on a separate memory card so that you have to keep swapping it out when you want to actually play a game, and then change cards again every time you want to browse the web. Both these issues, however, have been addressed in the updated DSi model, as the following video demonstrates…

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iPhone who? Opera Mini gets speedy update

Steve O'Hear — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:02:42 +0000

As we’ve noted before, Apple isn’t the only company putting the full Web in your pocket. When Opera released version 4 of its Java-based Opera Mini browser last June, we suggested that features such as ‘desktop view’, tiled zooming, and the use of a proxy server to speed up browsing, meant that it went a long way to addressing any iPhone-envy.

With the release of version 4.1, Opera isn’t resting on its laurels. New features include the ability to search for text within a Web page, auto-complete of URLs as you type based on your bookmarks and browsing history, and — as long as your phone supports the higher spec JSR-75 version of Java — you can now upload files and save Web pages for offline browsing. The ability to handle uploads means that Opera Mini can, for example, be used to share photos with sites such as Flickr, Facebook or a personal blog, all within the browser. Additionally, Opera claims that improvements to its proxy servers means that Web page requests are now up to 50% faster, resulting in “desktop-like speeds”.

Check out the company’s own video tour of Opera Mini after the jump…

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