Opera Live - Syncs PC with Mobile - FINALLY
So we’ve all read the news today. Opera (that browser company that dominates every platform other than the desktop) has *finally* gotten smart and created Opera Link, a service that lets you synchronize bookmarks between your desktop browser and your mobile phone browser - sort of. I’ve been asking for this for as long as I can remember. As early as February 12 of this year, when they announced that they were bringing Opera 9 to mobiles (which, AFAIK, still hasn’t really happened. Wow.), there I was, BEGGING them to see the light and offer up bookmark syncing across the platforms.
I mean, think about all your gadgets. Gaming systems, the Internet Tablet (well, not with OS2008, but whatever), phones, PMPs, etc, they all either come with Opera already, or there is a version available for it. Opera is the only browser that can say that, by the way. You’d *think* they’d want to take hold of such a competitive advantage. But they don’t. All of those platforms are disconnected from one another.
Enter Opera 9.5beta on the desktop and Opera Mini 4 Beta 3 (this was just released as part of the announcement. Stefan has the full changelog). Opera Mini
is the java version of their browser, designed for just about any
mobile phone on the market. It passes everything through a proxy, which
converts and reduces things so that you use less data on your phone,
and pages get reformatted specially optimized for the mobile phone. It
has all sorts of neat little page transitions and whatnot, but on S60,
a java app is a java app.
So you create an Opera Link account (nothing major, just the typical
name and email type thing) and then login on both your desktop and your
phone. That’s it. It starts syncing all your bookmarks, and your "speed
dial", which I can only figure is another form of bookmarks. It’s
really easy to do, and true to the claim, you can then access all of
your bookmarks regardless of desktop or mobile. The first thing I hear
people say is "but why would I want to view the full web pages on my
phone? Wouldn’t I need a mobile version of the webpage?" The answer is
no, you don’t. With Opera, it’s designed to give you the full desktop
experience, only on your phone. Things like the mini-map, control over
image quality, and ajax, all let you view just about anything on your
phone now. I was able to login to the MobileBurn.com backend and edit a
post through the Opera Mini browser on my N81 easily.
What’s the drawbacks to this? Well, first of all, the only things that
Opera Link syncs is the desktop and Opera Mini. None of the native
versions of Opera will support it, nor will any gaming systems or that
sort of thing. So while it’s a step in the right direction, it’s MUCH
too small of a step, in my opinion. Second, Opera on the desktop is
MUCH slower than Firefox (in my experience) and doesn’t offer near the
level of expansion. Third, Opera Mini is a java app. There’s no way I’m
going to ignore the Nokia Web browser in favor of a java app. End of
story.
However, since I have a PC, I can also use Nokia’s PC Suite to sync my
bookmarks with Firefox (or IE, if I used that). If you’re rocking Linux
or Mac, then this is something you can’t do, and thus, the Opera setup
isn’t a bad one, even if you never really use Opera, except for to send
a link to your phone. Your desktop computer does not need to be on, nor
do you need to have Opera open on it for the Opera Mini browser to
access the bookmarks. They use their servers to temporarily store the
data, so you’re good.
To Opera: keep trying. You’ve got the distribution setup, now you just
need to work on the execution. Drop the widgets from your browser, they
suck anyways. Work on extensions like Firefox has. But KEEP GOING. With
mobile web taking off (and I mean mobile devices accessing the web, not
the mobile-formatted web), you’re in a very unique position to really
capture that market. Don’t screw it up.
Opera Widgets don’t only run on the desktop browser, they also run on mobile phones (See: http://operawatch.com/news/2007/10/opera-widgets-now-on-mobile-phones-too.html). Widgets are an extremely effective way to get web apps onto mobile phones and devices. And since the implementation of Opera Widgets is the same across all OSs and devices, adding the same support to the desktop browser is not much more work for us.
Daniel Goldman
Opera Software
Just thought I’d mention that I find your site very useful, but am most often reading it on my phone, so can’t comment all that easily. Keep up the good work.