Launching Opera Watch 2.0
Published April 16th, 2008 9:57 AM EDT By Daniel GoldmanIt has been nearly a month since leaving Opera Software; I’m adjusting to life outside of Opera. The new project, which I’ve started working on, has taken up lots of my time; it hasn’t left much time for blogging here on Opera Watch.
Opera Watch is a great resource for Opera users/fans and potential users alike; I really want to see it continue and be ‘the place’ for Opera news on the Web. My new project, however, hasn’t left me much time for full-time blogging.
I’ve asked a few members of the Opera community to join the Opera Watch team and help with the blogging.
I’m delighted to announce our new team, which will hopefully continue to grow over time.
New bloggers
Please help me give a warm welcome to Arthur Wilkinson (a.k.a GT500), Kyle Baker, Kelson Vibber, Tamil, Charlie Reinehr (a.k.a. BAMAToNE), and David Storey.
I suspect these names will be familiar to many of you.
I’m really excited to have David Storey, Opera’s Chief Web Opener, on board too. His knowledge of Web standards is immense and whose opinion I greatly respect. It’s great to have you on board, David.
I’m pretty excited to have these new bloggers on board. I look forward to a new era of Opera Watch.
As for me, I’ll still be blogging here, though not at the same rate and frequency (since starting Opera Watch in 2004 I wrote a total of 963 posts).
Here’s a bit about our new bloggers to help you get to know them better:
Arthur Wilkinson
Arthur Wilkinson has been using Opera on the desktop side since at least early 2001. He discovered Opera while learning Java programming. It was recommended in his first Java Programming book for testing Java Applets since it was the only Windows browser at the time that supported the Sun Java Runtime Environment. Since Arthur made the switch those many years ago he has found to love the advanced features, faster browsing, better security, and especially the trend to build in more features than he actually needs.
Kelson Vibber
Kelson Vibber is a web developer in Southern California. He was first introduced to Opera by a college classmate in 1999, when both were working in a campus computer lab. These days, he uses both Opera and Firefox on Windows and Linux on a daily basis, as well as other browsers for development purposes.
Kelson has been involved in promoting both Opera and Firefox, and launched the Alternative Browser Alliance campaign to encourage greater cooperation among both browsers’ fan communities.
In his spare time, he enjoys reading science-fiction, fantasy, and comic books, and has maintained a fan website dedicated to the super-hero, The Flash, since 1996.
Kyle Baker
Kyle Baker was born in Western North Carolina in 1986, where he grew up with his parents and two older brothers. His first chance to use the Internet was not until the year 1997 when his family got a brand new personal computer and dial-up Internet access. It was not for another few years before he was first introduced to Opera.
Kyle has been using the Opera browser for approximately eight years now. He mainly uses the desktop version of Opera, but has in the past used Opera Mini, Opera Mobile and Opera for the Nintendo Wii. Kyle first began using Opera as his browser of choice due to the fact that Opera’s tabbed browsing feature allowed him to accomplish tasks much faster over dial-up Internet access than other alternative browsers that he had tested. Shortly after choosing Opera as his daily browser, he became interested in web design and development which also led to an interest in web standards (an area that Opera has been very loyal in supporting).
Kyle’s current occupation is a full-time student. He is currently a computer science major at North Carolina State University. He does a little bit of web design as a hobby and voluntarily manages and maintains three separate web sites (a personal blog, a small forum for BMW automobile enthusiasts and a club website for A.C.M. and A.I.T.P. at North Carolina State University).
Charlie Reinehr
Charlie Reinehr works as an IT administrator at The University of Alabama. He is a frequent contributor on the Opera Forums and has been an Opera user for the better part of a decade. Charlie runs the largest and most popular Opera group on Facebook.
Tamil
Tamil has been writing Opera tips, tricks and tweaks on his blog since 2005. His blog, which reads like a FAQ, has become well read over the years. Tamil is also a very active member of the Opera Forums, with over 82,000 posts.
David Storey
David Storey heads up the Open the Web initiative at Opera. This small global team is tasked with improving the compatibility of web sites across Opera’s wide range of browsers, as well as promoting web standards, accessibility and good practices, so that the web will work for all standards-aware browsers, platforms, devices and users. On his blog, Slightly Ajar, he discusses this work, as well as random topics, from travel to music. David previously worked for CERN, home of the World Wide Web, before taking up his post at Opera Software.
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Good luck with the v2
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hi daniel,
i wish you good luck with your project and welcome to the new bloggers.
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Hey, you are all welcome. I’ll keep reading and I won’t detete Opera Watch from my Speed Dial.
If you want, visit my Opera Blog in Spanish:
http://www.andresruizsays.blogspot.com/
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Welcome all!
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Welcome to you all! I am looking forward to your contributions! (And good luck, Daniel!)
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Thanks for the intro Daniel.
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Great news! My favorite blog about my favorite program is alive and kicking!
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Glad you are back.
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woot! Opera Watch is back on track. Looking forward for stories in my feed.
(Please don’t hate the firefox under linux)
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Thanks Daniel and everyone!
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What about Konqueror?
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Yay glad to have Opera Watch back
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Daniel, will you still be checking your Opera Watch email and reading posts/comments on this site? Will submitting guest articles or tips/tricks be the same as before?
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I just wanted to say thanks for the opportunity to be part of the new Opera Watch!
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I wish you all the success with this new Opera Watch, and hope you Daniel could keep posting enough times so we don’t have to miss you. Good luck on v2!
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IceArdor, yes. I’ll still be reading an the posts and comments here, though I’ll take more of an active role behind the scenes.
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Thank you Daniel for relaunching the project, and thanks also to everyone hat accepted to be part of the project!
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Welcome to the new folk. I’m surprised Tamil wasn’t the first to comment this blog post with a smilie.
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Excellent news!
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great news! and keep posting!
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Glad to see you back here, Daniel. :up:
And a warm welcome to the new bloggers! :cheers:
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Welcome all! Daniel we would miss your regular posts around here. It’s wonderful to have diverse opinions on the blog and would bring in much more variety around here. All the very best guys!
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That’s a great team you’ve assembled here! I’m really looking forward to reading everyone’s posts.
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What is this??
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t u
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Thank for work!
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Welcome all, and Daniel this proves u cant keep a good thing down .,Cheers.: )
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bama! \o/
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Thanks to you all !!
Many more to come !!!
God Bless you all !!!!
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Good
Just keep up what you did 
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Great to hear the new developments, Daniel. Welcome to the new OW team.
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best of luck!