Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Opera Software

Opera Founder Resigns from the Company

Riley Kennysmith — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 21:22:33 +0000

Jon S. von Tetzchner announced his resignation from Opera in an email to Opera employees. The founder cited differences of opinion with the Board and Management of the company as his reasons for leaving, and TechCrunch reports that he has other projects he is working on.

Von Tetzchner founded Opera Software in 1995 with the late Geir Ivarsøy, and was CEO until 2010 when he resigned to become a full-time strategic advisor for the company.

Opera Launches A Mobile App Store

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 16:11:17 +0000

Opera has launched a mobile app store called Mobile App. It will be a Speed Dial link in the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers will offer applications for BlackBerry, Java, Symbian, and Android. The number of apps available for download will vary according to the mobile OS you have. Opera used Appia to build their mobile app store. Appia offers about 140,000 apps. [GigaOM]

Opera 11 Was Downloaded 6.7 Million Times In The First Day

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 17:30:12 +0000

Desktop browser Opera 11 was released last week and the company had an interesting number to report about it. The Opera 11 browser was downloaded 6.7 million times in 24 hours. Opera 11 has browser extensions support and new tab functionalities.

Opera 10 was downloaded only a fraction amount of times compared to Opera 11. Opera 10 was downloaded 1.7 million times in the first day. It helped that Opera 10 sent out an update notification when Opera 11 was released. The Opera iPhone application was downloaded 1 million times in the first day. Now Opera has about 150 million users worldwide.

[TechCrunch]

Opera Mini Hit 76.3 Million Users In October

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 20:13:26 +0000

Opera’s browser for mobile devices, Opera Mini, hit 76.3 million users last month. After their iPhone application was approved, they saw about one million downloads on the first day. About 41.6 billion pages were loaded in Opera Mini last month, generating in 616 million MB being consumed. Opera revealed these numbers in a report that monitored usage. [TechCrunch]

Opera Buys FastMail.FM

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 03 May 2010 06:56:17 +0000

Opera has acquired webmail service company FastMail.FM. FastMail.FM started about 10 years ago and will continue to run and grow their email service. “Joining together Opera’s expertise in web browsers and especially the mobile market, and FastMail.FM’s expertise in email, will allow us to grow and take on the next big challenges in running and building an email service,” said the FastMail.FM in a statement. The terms of the deal were undisclosed. Opera has about 55 million users of their desktop browser and about 55 million users of the Opera Mini browser.

Opera Mini Browser Apple App Hits 1M Downloads In One Day

Amit Chowdhry — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 00:00:05 +0000

Opera Mini was at the top of the Apple App Store and featured across 22 countries when it launched. As a result the Opera Mini browser application was downloaded one million times on the first day. Below is the full press release.

One million downloads

Opera Mini for iPhone #1 download in iTunes App Stores everywhere

Oslo, Norway – April 15, 2010

Apple said “Yes”, and iPhone users around the world said, “Yes, please”. Opera Mini was downloaded more than one million times in its first day of availability in each market. Opera Mini is currently the number one iPhone app in the 22 featured Apple App Stores on their site, as of 8 a.m. CET today.

iTunes Store Top 10 Apps (image)

According to Apple’s download count, Opera Mini has been added to 1,023,380 Apple devices. Opera Mini is the world’s most popular browser that brings the Web to nearly any mobile phone. Initial previews of the browser garnered rave reviews, indicating that Opera Mini delivers up to six times the speed, especially on congested networks, and significant Web-page compression to keep roaming and pay-per-MB costs at a minimum.

“Today iPhone users have a choice, and, as the numbers show, they are eager to explore new and faster ways to surf the Web on the iPhone – especially during heavy Web traffic,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software. “With any widely available and frequently downloaded Opera product, we are appreciative of all the feedback we are getting, as it helps us to continually improve our product and better meet the needs of our users.”

About Opera Software ASA

Opera Software ASA has redefined Web browsing for PCs, mobile phones and other networked devices. Opera’s cross-platform Web browser technology is renowned for its performance, standards compliance and small size, while giving users a faster, safer and more dynamic online experience. Opera Software is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, with offices around the world. The company is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol OPERA. Learn more about Opera at http://www.opera.com/.

Opera Mini Browser Gets Approved For Apple App Store

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 01:06:22 +0000

Opera has finally received the green light for a new iPhone web browser. The mobile browser, Opera Mini will work for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Opera Mini compresses data by 90%. “We are delighted to offer iPhone and iPod touch users a great browsing experience with the Opera Mini App,” stated Opera Software CEO in a press release. “This app is another step toward Opera’s goal of bringing the Web to more people in more places.” Opera Mini will be available as a free download. [Opera PR]

List Of April Fools Pranks 2009 On The Web, Reddit Tops All Of Them

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:41:57 +0000

1. Google gave us CADIE, upside down YouTube videos, and GMail autopilot.
2. TorrentFreak told us that Warner Brothers plans to acquire The Pirate Bay.
3. Arrington announced that he is looking for a date from readers and that General Mills has acquired CrunchGear.
4. CenterNetworks announced the CN51 Startup Conference.
5. SocialBlade claims they cracked the Digg algorithm.
6. The Guardian claims they are killing print version of their site and is going Twitter only.
7. Woot.com is selling a bag of crap for $3.00 and $1 million shipping.
8. Opera announced face-gestured web browsing.
9. Car and Driver is reporting that President Obama wants “a complete withdrawal from America’s premier racing series is expected to save more than $250 million between GM and Chrysler, a substantial amount considering the drastic measures being implemented elsewhere.”
10. Qualcomm stated that their convergence program has implemented tiny base stations into thousands of pigeons. They also stated that these are no ordinary pigeons but a hybrid wolfpigeon.
11. SlideShare told their users that they are Rockstars.
12. Funny or Die wrote that they have been acquired by Reba McEntire and is now called RebaOrDie.com.
13. AOL Radio was considering playing Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up all over AOLRadio.com.
14. Amazon.com launches brand new cloud computing service called Floating Amazon Cloud Environment (FACE).

More to be added as they are discovered…

These were all good, but I think out of all them, Reddit had the best April Fools prank. They replaced their entire user interface to look just like Digg as you will notice in the above screen shot.

Mozilla Supporting EFF To Advocate iPhone Jailbreak Support

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:14:25 +0000

Mozilla will be supporting the Electronic Frontier Foundation to push for the legalization of iPhone jailbreaking with the U.S. Copyright Office. Mozilla CEO John Lilly stated that “choice is good for users, and choice shouldn’t be criminalized.” Jailbreaking an iPhone means that the device can accept software that is external from what is offered on iTunes. Apple believes that accepting any external software is a violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).

“This is not us criticizing Apple,” stated Mozilla CEO John Lilly. “But it’s the principle of the thing. Choice is good for users, and choice shouldn’t be criminalized. The Internet is too important for all of us for that.”

Some of the popular applications available on jailbroken iPhone applications include tethering applications.

Mozilla may have a bias against Apple because developing a browser for the iPhone would require them to use the Webkit rendering engine used for Safari. “Given the choice, would we work on a platform where the sole company controlling it makes us unwelcome, or would we work on a platform, like Linux, where we are welcome? The answer is going to be easy for us,” Lilly stated in an interview with Computerworld.

Even if the U.S. copyright office grants jailbroken iPhones from being legal, Mozilla is still unlikely going to develop a browser for the iPhone. This is the same case with Opera Software ASA. It was reported earlier that Apple blocked Opera’s web browsing application from being added to the iTunes App Store. Other companies supporting the EFF include Skype and Cydia.

Apple Rejects Opera Browser From iPhone

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:51:09 +0000

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has blocked Opera Software ASA (OSL:OPERA) from releasing their own browser software into the App Store. The Opera browser is already supported by Windows Mobile and many people use it as their default rather than Internet Explorer. It seems that Microsoft is giving users more choice when it comes to mobile devices.

Since the co-founder and CEO of Opera, Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner was interviewed by The New York Times a few days ago, there has been speculation for why Apple blocked them. The biggest reason is that Opera directly competes with the Safari web browser. Another reason why it is possible that Opera was blocked is that it has a Javascript interpreter built-in which has a tendency to use up a lot of memory and crash often.

Apple’s Safari browser has a lot of positives to it, but it does not support Flash for the iPhone. Apple tried to compensate it’s lack of Flash-support by providing a separate YouTube program that automatically full-screens any videos that are watched. But is that really enough?