Opera's grand plan for widgets has become a bit clearer with the news that it plans to make its widgets run on mobile phones, TVs, car stereos … anything that can have a screen and a simple processor embedded.
This is potentially a very big leap forward in the mobile browsing space, because it's kinda obvious to everyone in the industry that web developers aren't going to convert websites for small-screen viewing en-masse any time soon. Running small web apps on a mobile phone that can be easily developed and tested on desktop PCs means much less data transfer, responsive UI and better visuals.
I got in touch with Opera in Norway to ask about it and was surprised that they offered me an interview with their CEO John S Von Tetzchner even though he was on holidays in Iceland at the time.
I talked to him about the "Opera Platform" for devices and the open standards involved. Then I asked him whether he would swim from Norway to Australia…
