Save Money on Internet (This is not an ad)

For all my fellow volunteers out there, and for many people in Kenya in general, this is a huge deal.  Opera just release a beta of their version 10 web browser, and it finally does what their mobile phone browser has been doing all along—it works in tandem with Opera’s servers to recompresses data before it gets sent to you.

If you pay by the megabyte, you have no excuse now to use anything except Opera.  It makes my little Firefox Greasemonkey/Mowser hack look silly.

They call the feature “Opera Turbo.”  Basically, before the pages are opened by your browser, the Opera servers resize and recompress the images to use less bandwidth. They also perform similar tricks for text (HTML, etc).  Bottom line: fewer megabytes used to visit the same exact sites.

It’s a little toggle-able icon in the lower left-hand corner of the browser.  Super easy.  Here’s a screenshot… go get it now! (It works on Mac and Linux, too.)

PS: If you’re nuts about privacy, you may want to read more about this feature.  Your data is being intercepted by Opera, after all.