Money Matters in India 

— Posted inTravel — 4 min read
The new notes of 2000 and 500 rupees make a debut

During the last 10 days I have been in India. This is part of my travels where I share the vision of Vivaldi. It has been a very enjoyable trip, where I have met a lot of smart people and eaten a lot of great food.

It has been an interesting time to be in India. In the US, we have had a very controversial election. In Iceland, my country of birth, we have had an election as well and we await the formation of a new government.

In India, the government last week decided to demonetise the currency and to cancel the use of 500 and 1000 rupee notes. This is more than 80% of all notes in use in the country. As you can imagine, this creates all kinds of issues. (more…)

Vivaldi web browser

— Posted inBlog — 1 min read

We have come far since our launch of Vivaldi 1.0 in April. The feedback that we get from you all spurs us on as we add new features, new options, new themes and improve performance. It is great to make products that create excitement! Our goal is to continue on this path and provide a better browser each week. 

Feel free to spread the word to your friends, add buttons to your pages and generally spread the word!

Thanks for your support!
Jon.

Back on the road

— Posted inBlog, Travel — 2 min read

Jon von Tetzchner and Xavier Niel with some students from L’école 42 and Vivaldi power users.
Source: Pierre Creuseveau

More pictures are available here for Paris and Brussels events.

This week, I continue my travels, starting in Kiev. Today, May 15th, I’m hosting a meet-up at SOSna Gastropub. We start at 19:30. If you’re in or near Kiev, I hope you can make it. I want to find out how to make Vivaldi better for you.

After some meetings in Kiev, I head north to Poland. Specifically Gdansk for InfoShare 2016. If you’re at the conference, please say hi. At 10 AM on Wednesday, May 18th, I’ll have a Q&A with respected Estonian journalist Vahuur Orrin. We’ll chat about my experiences building two browser companies and our plans with Vivaldi.

Then, on Thursday at 10:30, I am humbled to share the stage with fellow entrepreneurs Stefan Batory (iTaxi), Marcin Iwiński (CD Project), Marcin Treder (UXPin) and Michał Sadowski (Brand24). We’re talking about how we build companies that can compete on a global basis.

I’ll give you a brief preview of what I’m going to say. One of our not-so-secrets is our community. That makes all the difference when you’re challenging giants. So I hope I can say thank you to as many of you as I can.

See you on the road…

On the road again

— Posted inBlog, Travel — 2 min read

I tend to travel a lot for work. I’ve always found it valuable to meet people in person. I find it builds far better relationships than you can with emails, phone calls or video conferences.

And it’s important to hear from you directly to make sure we’re on the right path. I see the community as an extension of our team. We’re building this together, after all.

So next week I’m back on the road. London on Monday the 9th, Paris on the 10th, Brussels on the 11th and then to Oslo on Thursday and Friday. Here are a few things going on:

In Paris, I’m very excited to speak with the students and Vivaldi users at Xavier Niel’s L’école 42, a pioneering new type of school for computer science and entrepreneurship with a number of innovative teaching methods. I can’t wait to learn more about the school and meet some of the brightest, most ambitious minds in France. 

In Brussels, you can meet me at Café numérique, where I’ll be in conversation with Robin Wauters. Robin is of course one of the foremost tech journalists working today. It’s always exciting to talk to Robin. If you’re in Brussels, I hope you’ll consider registering.

I’ll check in here with more info on my trip as it unfolds. I hope I get to meet as many of you as I can when I’m on the road. Thanks for being part of our community.

Vivaldi 1.0: Not for everybody, just you

— Posted inBlog, Vivaldi — 2 min read

Here it is. After more than a year of public development, we’re honored to share Vivaldi 1.0 with you today. You’re the reason we’ve made it this far.  

Download Vivaldi 1.0

When we started building a browser, we wanted to do it on our terms and for our users. So far, we’ve kept that promise. Vivaldi isn’t like any other browser. We’re not trying to make it simple in an effort to appeal to every user. We’re introducing features and customizations that browsers today don’t have. We’re making it for you, and you deserve more from your browser.  

That focus is very important. Vivaldi should adapt to you. It shouldn’t feel like a browser for everyone. Because it isn’t. It’s for you.  

When you download Vivaldi today, we’ll prompt you to start customizing your browser immediately.

That’s just one small feature you’ll notice, along side many others.  

If you like the work we’ve done, we hope you’ll consider telling a friend. The world needs more independent browsers, especially ones that keep the users at the center of what they do.  

Thank you for starting out on this journey with us. It means everything to us that you’re part of it.

Download Vivaldi 1.0

Vivaldi 1.0 - Modern & Classic

A few words about Open Source & Vivaldi

— Posted inBlog, Technology — 1 min read

I got a question from users while doing AMA on Twitter regarding the license of Vivaldi. I replied with a short answer due to Twitter’s character limitation but I thought I would post longer answer here.

Our source code package is available here: vivaldi.com/source. This links to a copy of the Chromium source code with the changes we made to allow our HTML/CSS/JS UI to run. 

All our changes to Chromium source code are under a BSD license and hence can read by anyone. The details are explained in the the README and LICENSE files, within that package. 

In addition, all of our UI code (included in normal packages) is written in plain, readable text. This means that all parts of Vivaldi are full audit-able and open from that perspective.

More than 400,000 downloads and it’s still counting

— Posted inBlog, Vivaldi — 1 min read

Dear friends,

 

Last week we shared the first technical preview of Vivaldi. We wanted to build a browser for power users like you and me.

We expect something different – something better – from the tools we use on the web. We thought a lot of people might feel the same way.

 

Since last Tuesday, more than 400,000 of you have downloaded Vivaldi.

That’s more people than live in my native country of Iceland – and almost as many sheep.

It’s an amazing result for a technical preview of a browser.

This has been a great start, but it is only the beginning. Many more out there want a browser built for their way of using the web.

 

Your support means a great deal to us, so we invite you to stay on the bleeding edge.

Even though we have a small team, we intend to deliver a weekly snapshot of our progress from now on.

 

Thanks for trying Vivaldi. Here’s to what’s next.

 

Kind regards,

Jon

Thank you

— Posted inBlog, Vivaldi — 1 min read

Dear Friends,

 

I am sitting on the plane home after a very busy week in Norway. A very satisfying week.

I could not be prouder over what our team have achieved. I am also proud and grateful over the response we got from all of you.

 

It is clear that we are on the right path.

The features. The looks. The details. 

 

But our job is not done. This is where the real job starts. Now we are no longer working in silence. 

We have a large group of people, all of you supporting us and demanding things from us. I love it! 🙂

 

From now on we will start to do weekly builds. 

We will have a relatively light process in order to show you progress we make every week.

 

This is a browser for all of us.

I am confident that together we will make this a great product.

 

Cheers!

Jon.

Number of Opera users

— Posted inBlog — 1 min read

One of the things that I am really proud of is that so many people have chosen to use Opera every month. Latest number indicate more than 330 million users and Opera even claims more than 350 million users. Those are significant numbers, although I think we could have done even better than that. The official goal was to reach 500 million is 2013, while the current management moved that goal to 2015.

Of the 350 million users, 248 million are using Opera Mini, 22 million are using Opera Mobile, 51 million are using Opera Desktop and between 10 and 30 million are using Opera on other devices.

Of these users, most are still using Presto. Presto is still in use in Opera Mini and most all devices, such as the Wii and DS, are using Presto as well. Probably half the Desktop and Mobile users are still on Presto. Adding this together gives you around 300 million Opera users still on Presto.

Have a great day!
Jon.