Welcome to Opera Bits

The fun never stops at Opera and June was no exception. We have again reached another milestone with the launch of Opera 9. There was no holding back. With BitTorrent, Content Blocking and Widgets, Opera 9 has gone to places no other browser has gone before. If you haven't downloaded it, what are you waiting for? Opera 10 perhaps?

Bit 1

Confessions of a Blogger

Blog by JoniMueller

I confess, I've been a very bad blogger lately. I haven't updated as regularly as I should. (And if you saw my WordPress blog, you'd really scold me. Posting there is even more sparse!) Why? Seems like when there's plenty going on in your life, you don't have time to blog about it. When life is boring and uneventful, there's plenty of time. But nothing to report.

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Bit 2Portrait of Benjamin Joffe

Interview: Benjamin Joffe

Opera Community Widget Winner

Also known as the Widget master, Benjamin has been churning out Widgets quicker than we can post them on My Opera's front page. He has crushed other contenders in Opera's Widget Summer Series Competition, winning four out of the last seven weeks. So who is this Widget wonder from Down Under?

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Bit 3

ThinkGeek

So what do geeks really think? We want to know. So we sent one of our server monkeys to find out in this probing interview of ThinkGeek's Willie Vadnais.

Server Monkey: Seriously, are you a true geek? And speaking of which how would you define "geek"?

Willie Vadnais: There is no all-encompassing way to classify a geek. We generally define a geek as somebody who is passionate about technology and how it's all put together. So, from that definition most engineers,hobbyists, students, scientists, tinkerers, gamers, etc can be considered geeks. Of course as with any other label it's a range. Some folks are ubergeek overlords, and others are total newbies to geekdom. There are some quirks though. Many geeks have a strange affinity towards monkeys, are strangely more creative late in the night hopped up on caffeine, and prefer the term geek to nerd. As for me, I definitely would consider myself a true geek. Starting an ISP from scratch using Linux back in the early days, learning to program from O'Reilly books, and owning just about every console platform ever built are just a few clues. Oh, right, forgot one other aspect of 'being a geek'. The need for constant upgrades. Whether it's an OS, a cell phone, or even a relationship. A geek's life is plagued by a desire and need to upgrade to the next best thing.

SM: So just how did you geeks think of ThinkGeek?

WV: The four founders of ThinkGeek (all of which still work here) originally owned and operated a small ISP in Northern Virginia. We started the ISP back in 1995 when most folks were just learning about the Internet. There wasn't too much knowledge out there about how to put it all together, but with the help of several home grown Linux (slackware) boxes we started with just a single 28.8 modem servicing about half a dozen customers from basically a garage. Several years later that grew into thousands of customers and premium office space. By early 1999 though, the small ISP was becoming an endangered species. We knew we had to sell the company and move on to something else. We realized there was an entire community of folks that loved Linux, Open Source, gadgets, technology, etc out there and there was no defining retail establishment that fully understood those folks. So while still running WizardNet (our ISP), we dreamed up ThinkGeek and launched it on Friday the 13th in 1999. We received such a great response that we sold the ISP and focused 100% on ThinkGeek. And here we are today...

SM: Oh here's a fun one. What can't you live without? For me, it's tasty bananas. but I'm just a monkey.

WV: This must be a trick question. I'm a gamer at heart, enjoying just about every genre, so I can't live without my DLP HDTV projector and my precious console platforms. I can't live without my Linux media server either come to think of it. Or my bluetooth phone...

SM: This good friend of mine - not me - really wants to know what one thing no Geek can live without this summer...

WV: Well, ThinkGeek recently stumbled into a nifty gadget that is great for traveling. It's called the TrackStick GPS Data logger. Basically it's a unit about the size of a pack of gum that you can just throw in your backpack when you take that road trip to the beach for that 2000 person LAN Party this summer. Then when you return home, just plug in the device to your computer using the attached USB connector and, using MapQuest or Google Earth, you can literally retrace, track and playback your entire trip visually. Why would you want to do this? Because you can.

SM: That's a good point. Why do I do these interviews for Opera? Actually, it's because they're desperate and don't want to pay a real reporter. Last question and I'll go back to the (server) farm. How do you stop annoying door to door salesmen?

WV: Our office dogs are indispensable against solicitors hawking cheap art and telco services. But it's the robotic monkeys here that do must of the grunt work.

SM: Robotic monkeys...wish I'd thought of that.

Bit 4

Backstage at the opera

We came, we saw, we conquered. In a bold attack, Opera invaded Microsoft's territory in Seattle, USA to launch Opera 9. In a brazen tactical maneuver, Opera's Jon S. von Tetzchner, landed on Microsoft's shoreline from a high powered long boat. The battle was over before it even began with Opera 9 declared by waiting press, the clear winner of the browser wars. Check out more of the action from the day.