Opera has been teasing about reinventing the web, and with the release of Opera Unite, they may have just done that. If you were not keeping up with Opera today, they have announce a new service and series of plugins for the Opera 10 browser that allows users to easily share media, photos, documents, and thoughts. Think of it like Orb on steroids. With Opera Unite, a person's personal computer can easily become a server for a few, many, or any user they see fit. Honestly, it isn't the newest idea in town, but Opera has implemented it better than most other services, and I like it.

I installed Opera 10 Beta and Opera Unite first thing this morning, and had intended to spend a few hours in the afternoon setting it up; I had it running in about three minutes. I actually had to use it on the first day. I had a class to teach and needed some documents on my home machine. Typically, I use logmein.com to take control of my home machine and email the file I need. Unfortunately, logmenin is now blocked on campus and I could not access it. I did have my documents shared with Opera Unity, complete with password and user security. I had my document in three seconds flat, and I didn't even have to do the email trick. Later that day, I wanted to listen to some music on my iPhone, so I decided to browse the music on my home machine via Unity and it worked flawlessly.

Unity is gimmicky at this point, and I am anxious to see if it can replace services like Dropbox, or Live Desktop. I am tempted to say it will because it is more reliable, cheaper, and there are no file restrictions. Has Opera reinvented the web with Opera Unity? Maybe, but they certainly have reinvented multi-computer productivity for me.

If you are interested, head over to Opera to try it out.