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'The Hobbit' 3D tech divides our CNET reviewers

Now that Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" has opened in theaters around the world, the most controversial thing about it isn't even that he somehow is making three 3-hour movies out of a 300-page children's story. No, it's the way the movie has been shot that has the most people talking.

The "Hobbit" trilogy has been captured using James Cameron's 48-frames-per-second 3D technology (HFR 3D), which Jackson says leads to less eyestrain and a sharper picture.

Only a limited number of cinemas will be showing the movie in HFR -- Jackson says it's only 1,000 out of 25,000 theaters.

"On the first day of shooting 'The Hobbit' in 48 frames, there was not a single cinema in the world that could project the movie in that format," Jackson said, according to CinemaBlend.

While we're not going to go into how the technology works here, CNET editors David Katzmaier and Ty Pendlebury have just come out of a showing in HFR 3D and wanted to share their thoughts.… Read more

Put a powerful browser in your pocket with Opera Portable

Take one of the fastest, most modifiable browsers on a portable drive and use it on any computer. With Opera Portable Edition you'll never have to settle for using onboard options like Internet Explorer on any public computer again.

Opera Portable Edition behaves like most modern browsers and its sleek interface is a delight to look at. It works with practically no setup and pages load incredibly quickly. This portable browser can be personalized through various add-ons and apps. One thing you don't need to download is a pop-up blocker, as Opera has one already installed for you. … Read more

Browse the Web with Opera Mini app

Opera Mini is perhaps the most compact Web browser you can use for your Android device. It's smart, has easy-to-access options, and best of all, pages accessed in Opera Mini load very fast, even when compared to other browsers with the same data transfer speed.

Upon launch, Opera Mini takes you directly to the Quick Launch menu. When presented in its live link feed mode however, it instead displays links to Web pages that are related to the ones you have visited using the app. It is, after all, touted as the smart Web browser app that adjusts and … Read more

Microsoft's SkyDrive accidently freezes out Opera users

After a SkyDrive debacle over the weekend, which caused Opera users to be blocked from the cloud storage service, Microsoft has said it's working quickly to fix the problem.

The problem began when Opera, which is a Web browser, received a bug report showing that Microsoft's cloud storage service froze out all users when it was being loaded. Instead of being able to see their saved files and photos, users could only see millions of characters of code.

After some poking around, Opera's Hallvord Steen realized that the problem was "some strange bug in the Microsoft … Read more

TokBox gives WebRTC chat standard a real-world boost

A nascent Web standard called WebRTC just got a notable boost from TokBox, a provider of online chat services for companies such as Ford Motor and Coca-Cola that need a mechanism to communicate with customers.

WebRTC is designed to enable real-time video and audio chat with a Web browser, enabling Skype-like services on the Web. TokBox released a version of its software that adds WebRTC support, a move timed to coincide with today's release of Chrome 23, which includes WebRTC.

Having browser support for a standard is crucial to its success, obviously. But developers wanting want to use it … Read more

Fast and small Web browser for mobile devices

Opera Mini is a Web browser designed for the mobile device, which means it's intended to be small and fast. Opera Mini installs quickly, and anyone who's ever used a Web browser will have zero trouble using it. The Opera Mini interface is simple, with search and URL fields, and drop-down menus for things like bookmarking and history.

Opera Mini works by redirecting through an Opera server, which compresses content before it is sent. Due to this compression, Opera Mini works fast. We compared it with a couple of other more popular Web browsers on both iPhone and … Read more

Android's Opera Mini gets a socially networked Smart Page

A single new feature called Smart Page is the capstone to Opera Mini 7.5 for Android (download), finally bringing to Android Mini fans a feature that iOS Mini got back at Mobile World Congress in February.

Launching today, the Smart Page is a single-serving site from which people can check their social networking feeds, news sites, and recommended links based on their region. The social networking feature works with Twitter, Facebook, and the European social networking vKontakte.

Opera Mini is best known as a cross-platform browser that offers "Turbo," a compression option that can reduce bandwidth use … Read more

IETF standardizes Opus for flexible online audio

The Internet Engineering Task Force has standardized the Opus audio compression technology as RFC 6716.

The move paves the way for much broader use of Opus for anything from playing music to online voice chats. Opus is what's called a codec because it defines how to encode and decode a stream of data for more efficient storage or transmission.

"Opus is the first state-of-the-art, free audio codec to be standardized. We think this will help us achieve wider adoption than prior royalty-free codecs," Jean-Marc Valin, a Mozilla employee and author of Opus, said in a blog post today. … Read more

How corporate bickering hobbled better Web audio

For more than three years, Skype has worked to improve online audio through involvement in a project now called Opus. But perversely, Skype's new owner, Microsoft, is undermining Opus just as a Web standards effort is poised to carry it into the mainstream.

Opus is an audio "codec" -- technology to encode and decode media streams for efficient transmission over the Internet or storage on computing equipment. Opus backers besides Microsoft's Skype division include Google, Opera, and Mozilla.

Opus has a lot of potential to improve online audio, something that's increasingly important as more communications … Read more

Opera reaches 200M active users; Facebook tops Africa sites

The combined number of mobile users around the world using the Opera Mini mobile Web browser has hit 200 million users per month for the first time, the Norway-based company said today.

At the same time, users in Africa are leading the uptake in mobile browsing thanks to Facebook, despite the social network's monthly active users remaining mostly flat month-on-month in the past quarter at 955 million.

The makers of the Opera browser have released their monthly State of the Mobile Web report, which looks at its product usage across more than 50 countries.

Out of the 200 million … Read more