We picked up on this last week, but today is the official announcement. In a nutshell, “A test version of Opera’s formidable alternative browser introduces Unite, a plug-in that lets users share music, pictures, files, notes, and chat rooms straight from their desktop.”

For some more info, read Opera product analyst Lawrence Eng’s blog post on the subject:

“Currently, most of us contribute content to the Web (for example by putting our personal information on social networking sites, uploading photos to Flickr, or maybe publishing blog posts), but we don’t contribute to its fabric — the underlying infrastructure that defines the online landscape that we inhabit.

Our computers are only dumb terminals connected to other computers (meaning servers) owned by other people — such as large corporations — who we depend upon to host our words, thoughts, and images. We depend on them to do it well and with our best interests at heart. We place our trust in these third parties, and we hope for the best, but as long as our own computers are not first class citizens on the Web, we are merely tenants, and hosting companies are the landlords of the Internet.”

Diagram:

Video Overview:

see also.. TechCrunch: That Reinvention Of The Web Thing Opera Was Talking About? It’s Called Opera Unite and

Lifehacker: Opera Unite Puts a Media Server in Your Browser

Boy Genius Report: Opera announces “Opera Unite”, a web server within a web browser

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