Is Opera Unite a revolution, or is it just the fat lady singing?

(From Guardian Unlimited)

It's 13 years since Opera first hit the browser scene, but while the Norwegian software company has some dedicated fans it has never made great inroads on its rivals.

It's made plenty of attempts to shake things up in the past - and many of its innovations have been adopted by others - but after a lot of effort, Opera's claim to fame might be as the browser that got Microsoft to ditch Internet Explorer in Europe after a complaint back in 2007 .

On Tuesday, however, the company launched a new product that it thinks can get it back in the game: a new system called Unite that it says "reinvents the web".

Opera Unite turns any computer into both a client and a server, allowing it to interact with and serve content to other computers directly across the Web, …