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Opera Unite is a feature in the new Opera web browser that makes your web browser into a server that others can access.  This is certainly forward thinking and something that Opera is hedging on succeeding for the success and growth of their company it seems (it certainly has caught lots of buzz in the past few days).

Ok, so here’s how it works: I downloaded the latest version of Opera with Unite (available here at Opera Labs), installed it and enabled the Unite feature.  Immediately I created an account and the tool created a local unite page for me on my current computer (laptop.adrianmott.operaunite.com).  I then went about exploring a few of the services that some standard with the installation – most notably the Media Player, ‘Fridge’ (a note sharing application) and the File Sharing app.

The tool (it’s a browser remember) immediately let me point to my iTunes folder full of music and it had it loaded up in a matter of seconds for me to play.  It also provided me with a link for me to play the music remotely – which I tested and worked well.  The fridge is interesting, though I don’t like how you can only leave 40 characters in a single note.  They should learn from Twitter and enable 140 chars at least (and kill that awful font).

Perhaps the best way I’ll use the app is from my home media server.  I can simply leave Opera open on that machine (which happens to have ~75 GB of music) and access it from anywhere.  I don’t have to pay Amazon for S3 storage space and I can play the music from any machine with internet access.

Unfortunately for Opera, I really don’t see much use for this past the example I mentioned above.  As computing becomes more and more mobile, the need for an offline version of this is going to become apparent very quickly.  You see, if I close my browser or leave work to go to a baseball game or something and my computer remains in the off state, no one can access my page (the Opera browser is the web server).

I also tested the service with my iPhone and found that I could indeed access the page with my music, but I couldn’t play the music. It doesn’t appear that the Unite service is using Flash to play the media files either – can anyone else get this to work? I would be excited to see this work, as it could render the iPod app on my phone rather obsolete.

Another issue is that as the service grows and users add many friends who are able to access their Unite pages, their bandwidth will potentially be compromised (especially the many of us using cable modems). I will continue to test and use the service as long as I’m getting value from it, and can convince my friends to try it too.

Here’s a screenshot and a couple videos of the vision Opera had for Unite and a demo that was made for TechCrunch: