opera

Amazon Silk: Weaving a new browser

Among Amazon's announcements today is that the retail and cloud services giant is stepping into the browser market with a new Web browser that ships in its upcoming Android-based tablet.

That new browser is called Silk, and it's the latest effort to make Web browsing faster, especially on portable devices where the hardware is typically slower than what a user might have on a desktop or notebook computer. It can also learn how you browse the Web, and extend battery life by putting some of the heavy lifting in the cloud, Amazon says.

The company is putting the weight of its massive cloud services infrastructure behind the browser to make up for potential hardware shortcomings. While the Kindle Fire tablet ships with a dual-core processor that's capable of running games and other applications, the company says that users have come to expect a certain amount of speed on the desktop that isn't always there on mobile devices.

Amazon's solution is what it calls a "split browser," a method that makes use of local processing for some things, while tapping into its Elastic Compute Cloud to process and serve up content faster than users might get it directly from the device. … Read more

Physics shocker! Neutrinos clocked faster than light

European physicists have measured tiny particles called neutrinos moving just faster than the speed of light--only a smidgen faster, but enough to raise a serious possibility that Einstein's physics need a major overhaul.

The scientists sent a beam of neutrinos from CERN, on the Swiss-French border near Geneva, to the INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) Gran Sasso Laboratory in central Italy, 730 kilometers (454 miles) away, in a research project called OPERA. The physicists had planned to study a rare event, the transformation of the muon variety of neutrinos into the tau variety. Instead, they found the extraordinary … Read more

HTML gurus modernize Acid3 browser test

Two browser experts have pared back Acid3, a test that browser standards fans held up to spotlight Internet Explorer's shortcomings, so the test won't hold back development of those standards.

Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML specification, and Håkon Wium Lie, chief technology officer of browser maker Opera, decided to make the change, and Hickson announced it on Google+ on Saturday.

"Håkon Wium Lie and I are announcing that we have updated the Acid3 test by commenting out the parts of the test that might get changed in the specs," Hickson said. &… Read more

Opera acquires Handster to tap into app stores

Browser maker Opera Software announced a new step in diversifying beyond browser-driven search ads today, the acquisition of Android app store specialist Handster.

Handster offers a white-label app store platform that others can use to sell apps and "the world's largest independent Android content library," Opera said today. It also offers developer tools, financial transaction abilities for setting payments, services for curating content--and customers.

Device manufacturers using its services include MTS, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei, and LG Electronics, Opera said. The services will dovetail with the existing Opera Mobile Store, which already offers apps for "virtually every … Read more

Opera Solutions nabs $84M for 'big data' analytics

This week Opera Solutions, a provider of "big data" analytics tools, announced that the company has taken in an $84 million investment to expand its rapidly growing business. The investment round, the company's first, was led by Silver Lake Sumeru, with participation from Accel-KKR, Invus Financial Advisors, JGE Capital Management, and Tola Capital.

Founded in 2004, Opera has grown from 10 people to more than 600 staffers globally with development locations in New York, Shanghai, and New Delhi. The staff includes 180 scientists working to solve data-oriented challenges.

I spoke with CEO and founder Arnab Gupta today … Read more

Apple leads volatile mobile browser market

New statistics released today show a competitive volatility in the the mobile browser market absent from the slower-moving personal computer browser market.

Net Applications has long shown the total browser usage worldwide based on visits to a collection of Web sites using its analytics software. Now, though, it's separated PC browsing on desktops and laptops from mobile browsing on phones and tablets. With PCs, the story remains largely unchanged: Microsoft's Internet Explorer continues its gradual slide while Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari gradually rise.

But in the mobile market, there's a lot more jitter in … Read more

Opera finances improve despite fierce competition

Arguably, Opera Software has tougher competition now than at any point since the scrappy Norwegian company released its first browser in 1995.

Microsoft is aggressively developing Internet Explorer again. Firefox and Safari are widely used, and Chrome is ascendant. iOS and Android smartphones come with their own mobile browsers.

Despite that, Opera yesterday reported financial results with a healthy dose of good news. The recipe of Lars Boilesen, who took over as chief executive in early 2010, seems to be working.

Revenue for the second quarter of 2011 increased 29 percent from $31 million a year ago to $40 million. … Read more

Can any browser be considered 'safe'?

Judging from the headlines appearing this week on tech Web sites, you'd guess anyone using a browser other than Internet Explorer was a fool.

After all, IE version 9 scored a whopping 99.2 percent in NSS Labs' worldwide test (PDF) of the ability of top browsers to detect socially engineered malware. IE 8 wasn't far behind at 96 percent--the difference attributed by NSS Labs to the Application Reputation component added to IE 9's SmartScreen technology.

By comparison, the four other browsers tested were veritable social-malware sieves: Google Chrome 12 had a 13.2-percent detection rate, Firefox … Read more

Just how stupid are IE users?

Editors' note: The study written about below now appears to be bogus, according to the BBC. Please see our new story here.

When scientists attempt to correlate numbers, it's best to open a nice Casa Nuestra Tinto Classico and pour yourself a large glass.

Only then can you really savor the conclusions that can so easily be reached when one lot of numbers goes on a blind date with another.

Take this fascinating new study from a Canadian psychometric consulting company called AptiQuant. Appearing to have no relationship with the cosmetics of Mary Quant, these people still seem able … Read more

Opera 11.50 earns Web apps powers

Web apps made a tepid splash with the public when they debuted in Google Chrome last year, but that hasn't stopped other developers like Opera from joining the club. Also known as in-browser apps, Opera 11.50 for Windows (download), Mac (download), and Linux (download), released today, now offers Web apps in the form of Speed Dial extensions.

Web apps are special sites written in HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript that allow developers to treat the browser as the coding platform. What this means for the end user is that you can run games like Angry Birds, get real-time weather … Read more