There is a lot going on at Opera. I do not mean the Metropolitan Opera in New York, although there has been a lot going on there too (more than 200 performances this past season). I am referring instead to Opera Software ASA, the Norwegian software company. Opera’s vision is to deliver the best Internet experience on any device — any device. PC’s will continue to be important and there will be more and more of them over time, but there will be even more "devices" or "things". If it is electronic, it will likely have a WiFi chip in it. If it has a WiFi chip then it will be connected to the Internet. Things connected to the Internet are much easier to use if they have a simple interface — like the Opera browser.
What kind of devices in addition to PC’s? Mobile phones, personal digital assistants, televisions, cameras, GPS receivers, cars, boats, motorcycles, and medical instruments in the operating room — just to name a few. Billions of devices that will benefit from a boundary-less community connected to the Internet. As a company, Opera has some interesting values that it takes quite seriously. For example, Opera has a deep respect for their users and for the Opera community. The company also has a strong belief in the culture, health, and growth of the Internet — which means it will never seek to hinder the Net’s continuous evolutionary process by imposing proprietary standards. When it comes to building browser software, Opera abides by the five S’s: Speed (really fast), Size (small), Security (really good), Standards Compliance, and State of the Art. If you haven’t tried the new Opera 7.5 yet, I highly recommend visiting the Opera site and you will quickly see, as I did, that the Opera browser provides a very unique and pleasant Internet Experience. And now for a look at some of the latest Opera innovations.
In April, in "Talking With Your Browser", I wrote about a collaboration between IBM Corporation and Opera that resulted in a new browser that will allow you to use your voice to request web pages — and the browser will talk back to you. Sounds hard to beat but earlier this week, Opera announced that it has selected a set of Games4TV(tm) interactive games from Iacta LLC’s for inclusion in its new Opera 7 iTV Software Development Kit. This means that manufacturers who are developing interactive TV devices will be able to use Games4TV with the Opera browser for testing and demonstration of their hardware to customers. The standards-based Opera browser makes it easy for manufacturers and operators to customize their systems and make them really easy to use for the consumer.
Opera is also getting in the "Mood". Swedish set-top box manufacturer i3 Micro and Opera have announced that the Opera 7 browser will now be employed by i3’s Mood Box. The Mood Box is a small and sophisticated set-top box designed to fit into any residential home, hotel room or commercial setting — providing users with Internet-based real-time TV, video on demand, pay per view, music-on-demand, Internet browsing, email and more. The use of open standards by both i3 and Opera enables the Mood Box to work as part of an integrated set of applications. It looks to me like a very attractive alternative to traditional cable or digital TV.
The leading smartphone platform in the world is called the Series 60 Platform, built on the Symbian OS. The Series 60 platform is licensed by some of the foremost mobile phone manufacturers in the world including LG Electronics, Lenovo, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Sendo and Siemens. Series 60 takes advantage of the large color screen size and provides an easy to use interface and a suite of applications. Opera has now announced the 6.20 browser for Series 60. Opera uses a technology called SSR (Small-Screen Rendering) which allows web pages to be specially formatted for small screens (relative to PC’s) thereby achieving a good look in addition to rapid loading of the pages. A new feature called Content Magic takes SSR to the next level. Most web sites are not yet designed for mobile devices . They have advertising, banners, buttons, icons, and menus. Content Magic eliminates excessive scrolling through all the "clutter" by identifying the main content and jumping straight to it upon loading a page. Another new feature, called "Tags", allows users to select content wherever they want in a page, then immediately jump between the tags they have set. If users follow links within the site, the tags will be remembered when they return to the site’s homepage. Content Magic and Tags, along with a number of other new browser features, allow mobile browsing to become as easy as on desktop computers
In spite of the dramatic growth ahead for interactive TV and other kinds of devices, the PC is still going strong and will continue to be a vital part of our lives. The new Opera 7.50 works not only with Windows, but also with Mac, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris. Opera 7.50 includes email capability, newsreader, chat client, contact database, support for weblog newsfeeds and extremely fast browsing performance. I know that many people use the Microsoft Internet Explorer, but being that it is an aging application that has not seen a major update in years, the users are really missing something. If you are in this category, you will find Opera 7.5 to be amazing. The browser is free if you are willing to accept sponsored advertising in the user interface (pop-up advertisements are automatically blocked by Opera). For $39 you can register and remove the advertising.
Disclosure: I am an investor in and a director on the board of Opera Software ASA.

• Opera Press Releases
• Business Week story about Opera CEO