When I got up this morning and started going through my morning reading as the coffee was slowly returning my caffeine levels to normal I saw the first few posts about this thing Opera is trying to foist on us as something new. Then I saw Duncan’s post and thought maybe I should send him some coffee because his exuberance over Opera’s whiz-bang called Unite surprised me.

After all I am pretty sure that Duncan has been around the web as long as I have so the idea of a desktop application also including a web server shouldn’t have really been that much of a revelation. While Chris Messina does a fantastic job of tearing apart the whole idea of a web browser hosting a web server in the first place I’m more fascinated in how everyone thinks that this is something new.

Being able to serve up files through your own computer is nothing new, whether it be from the not so complex local FTP server through to IRC file server plugins for just about any of the available IRC clients. Heck I remember setting up a local FTP server that would also serve up HTML pages of the file lists (or if you were anywhere near competent display photographs). Note I did spend about half an hour trying to hunt it up but with no luck but as for the IRC file servers just do a quick search and you’ll find plenty.

There is absolutely nothing new other than the fact that Opera is doing it from within a browser and spinning a whole bunch of silly ass hype about how social this all is. Opera get over yourself – all you’ve done is copy an idea that existed, and still used, long before you tried to slough it off on us as some world changing event.

It’s not. Period.

But then this a re-occurring theme with most things Web 2.0. Take an idea that has been done before, slap a bunch of nice pale color schemes around it and tell the world you’ve just created the next great social media tool. Nice try folks but not everyone is falling for this.

Sorry Duncan but there isn’t anything new or wonderful here