Wow, this is huge. Opera just unveiled their new browser, Opera 10, with a new technology named Unite.

Opera Unite makes your computer a web server in a few clicks, with no technical skills needed. This is a true revolution, since it makes it incredibly easy for people to share their media and files directly from their computers. When I effortlessly played the music on my computer from another browser on my laptop, I realized the magnitude of this change. Anyone can share anything, privately or publicly.

If Unite (or other browsers with built in server) take off in volumes, this will cause a tidal wave of direct sharing across the internet that will have unprecedented ripple effects to multiple industries. Since anyone can password protect the content on their server with simple access code given to their friends, it is impossible to estimate, track or hunt down even a fraction of the content that will be made available directly from people to their friends, family and colleagues. In short, there will be no way to stop it, track it or do anything about it.

I think this is the true Web3.0.

I have been using Yoono 6 Firefox plugin for some time now. It is totally awesome toolset that pretty much has erased my need for multiple applications. Here’s a list of things it does for me and apps and browser tabs that it replaces:

email: No need to keep on Mac Mail or Gmail tab, I can read and create emails right from Yoono’s gmail tab. Yahoo and Hotmail are also supported.

chat: The only chat app open for me now is Skype, since all other chat services that I have accounts on (GTalk, AIM, MSN and Yahoo) are supported within Yoono. Gone: AdiumX.

twitter, facebook, friendfeed: Checking the current stream and doing quick status updates is a snap, no need for separate tools or tabs on. However, I still use Tweetie desktop app because of its better handling of shortening of web links as well as a few smaller but snappy features.

music: for those who like to listen to music or web radio while working on computer, that’s supported too, currently available services are last.fm and imeem. Gone: Last.fm desktop app.

blogging: This very blog post has been created using the web notes function in Yoono, and posting it directly from there. It hardly can get any easier than this.

wishlist: The next features I would love to see in Yoono are link shortening with bit.ly (using personal account) and broader mail support (for custom mail domains).

In summary, this is one of the most amazing pieces of software I have been using in a long time, and a HUGE improvement from its previous version including way better user interface, stability and functions.

During my recent trip to Arizona and Mexico, my iPhone suddenly bricked. I was sporting iPhone OS 3.0 beta, and could not restore the OS on the trip. Therefore, the only way to get back on track was to buy a new phone. I decided to use the opportunity to buy Blackberry Storm on Verizon, which was lauded as the closest competitor to iPhone, and which I deduced I needed anyway for our company for application development purposes.

In addition, my friend Eric from Mobileslate lended me a Blackberry Pearl that I could use with my existing AT&T account. Here are my thoughts so far.

First, the user interface on Blackberry Storm felt pretty awkward after intensive use of iPhone, but after a while, I started to get used to it. It still gives me way too much mistypes. There’s no easy way (to my knowledge) to have multiple keyboards, a feature that I got used to with my iPhone – I use both Scandinavian and US keyboards. The word guessing technology from Blackberry in English works just fine, it nails my thoughts most of the time. The email writing on Storm is not much fun, but it does the job. I really like the integrated inbox feature for all types of messages, although nonexistent spam filters on Blackberry servers render the inbox nearly unusable with boatload of spam.

Blackberry Pearl has done its job as expected, although it feels nearly like feature phone when compared to the visual interfaces of Storm and iPhone. I like the loudness of the speaker on both Blackberries. What I don’t like in either device is the badly located side buttons that so easily get accidentally pressed, invoking camera or voice dialing when you don’t want it. The orientation change on Storm is nice, but most of the time too slow to respond.

The biggest positive surprise has been the Blackberry App World. It is just a fantastic app store, if possible even better than iPhone in user experience. The offering obviously is limited compared to iTunes, but I definitely see App World being a major step to enabling vibrant app usage in Blackberry devices. I wish I had the same functionality on the Facebook app that I had in the iPhone. There’s no LinkedIn app for Blackberry to my knowledge.

So far, Blackberry does not stand chances to replace iPhone, but for now, I will get by with two of them instead of iPhone. However, when the next gen iPhone launches, you can find me on the line outside the closest Apple Store.

Year 2009 has unfolded as gloomy as ever, with banks on free-fall, company profits shrinking rapidly, and job losses mounting. Basically, the sentiment can be summarized with the following couple of Tweets:

So what’s up for the social media startups? Ad revenue is falling rapidly, funding has dried up. Companies are reducing workforce to gain runway. But there are good news coming behind this overwhelmingly gloomy picture. First a little reminder: the plentifully available funding was basically hurting whole industries through enabling too lavish use of FREE as a business model. Richly funded companies had enough money not to care about the business model, and they could keep the investors happy by showing growing traffic numbers. Now people have realized that traffic does not necessarily equal money. If the revenue per user is lower than infrastructure cost, growing traffic will cause bigger losses. Easy math, right? When did VCs forget this?

Now to the good news. There is no funding available for broken or non-existent business models. This means that companies who are building serious, long-term, profitable business can exist even in the market of social media without being crushed by people offering everything free, paid for by the VCs. Companies who are in for the long term will also be again able to hire employees with proposals that require some REAL work, not hanging around the office parties with beer bottles and free gourmet food. More and more of us have to earn our income through excellent service of the customer. It is sobering, if not humbling – but then, it is SUSTAINABLE.

So will we lose our abundance of great services for free? I don’t think so. Services that are not focused on mass-market or not gaining traction in the mainstream will have to build in paid business models, while as mainstream services can make their income through advertising. Sure, we will definitely have less options, but there will still be way more services available and innovative ideas coming than any of us can ever use. What’s wrong with that?

Optimistic entrepreneurs will say that this is the best time for starting a new company. There is a lot of available resources, the job opportunities are less lucrative or non-existent, and the cost of starting up a company has gone down tremendously due to technological advances. I also remain optimistic – and here’s why:

When the economic realities are less rosy, it is time for different kind of innovation. The innovation that matters right now revolves around business model. Ideas that disrupt cost structures or create entirely new markets are obviously always good, but slower economic times will narrow the focus on the core: create true tangible monetary value or die.

To gain perspective, let’s have a look at what is happening in two different markets:

1. Social Media. After years of complete focus on audience growth without realistic business models, the focus has shifted onto monetizing. This shift has enabled major growth for social web micropayment providers as well as virtual currency CPA networks. Companies worth mentioning here are Echovox, Spare Change, Offerpal, Super Rewards and Peanut Labs.

2. Mobile Apps. Hugely fragmented and costly distribution channels on mobile prevented new innovation from flowing into mobile applications. iPhone showed the way for democratic, standardized and efficient distribution, and now everybody are taking notes after multiple major commercial successes through iTunes App Store. Companies who have benefited: Smule, Pangea and Subatomic Studios.

As a conclusion, there are always opportunities, even in tough economic times. We just need to focus back into creating true and visible value. If you have more good examples, let me know!

It’s been a while that I’ve had time to write on my blog. I wanted to share with you this fascinating crowd-sourcing project that essentially is building a complete reference of life existing on the planet earth.

If you are working in a field where you are in position to help, please contribute. This is an important step for us in building understanding of the life on our planet. See also the video of the award-winning speech of E.O. Wilson at TED conference in March 2007 regarding this project.

In a recent article in New York Times, Judy Estrin warns about current lack of long term government and private funding for groundbreaking technologies that could build foundation for future products and services. Estrin is a former CTO of Cisco and a serial entrepreneur, so her words have serious weight behind them.

In my opinion, there is no such problem. The real trend here is that the innovation is shifting from scientific findings and core technologies towards applications, design and user experiences. In many areas, the core technology is just good enough as it is, enabling ever increasing opportunities for new uses and applications. The last years have seen tremendous innovation in social web and mobile applications, as well as completely new generation of productivity tools that leverage ubiquitous broadband and mobile access to the web.

The rise and growth of companies in the markets of social networking, blogging, instant messaging, mobile and web recording, streaming and document sharing are good examples of the shift of innovation from core technology to the application of technology. Due to the maturity and commoditization of the core tech, applications are relatively cheap to develop and launch. This lowered barrier of entry has led to unprecedented shifts in market forces in multiple markets, including communication, media and enterprise applications.

Obviously, there are still many areas of technology that are currently in fundamental breakthrough phase, for example green/clean tech, renewable energy and bio/nanotechnology. These areas require significant investment to basic research as well as applied research and product innovation.

For savvy entrepreneur, taking the application route is much safer bet, but has also very short windows of opportunity due to low competitive barriers. I have personally been entrepreneur in enterprise applications, nanotech, mobile and web applications businesses, and my first hand experience tells clearly that breakthrough technology takes much longer to develop into products than application of existing tech to innovative feature applications.

If you are ready and willing to put 5-10 years of your lifetime to try to build significant breakthrough technology, and you have access to major funding sources, trying to reduce science to commercial technology is the right type of venture for you. Otherwise, try to do quick, iterative innovation in the application space, and never invest too much for the first try.