Opera Tackles Voice Browsing and RSS in Latest Beta Release

Opera Software ASA unveiled Thursday a beta test version of its next Web browser release that features speech recognition, discovery of news feeds and automatic Web-page resizing. While the next release had been on track to be Version 7.60, the Oslo, Norway, company announced a change in plans. It is retooling the version to be more than an update, which will include a yet-to-be-determined name, said Jon von Tetzchner, Opera's chief executive officer.

"We were preparing for the 7.60 release, but as work progressed and we kept adding improvements and functionality, it became very evident that we now have a browser that is so powerful, secure and easy to use that it exceeds the next logical version number and warrants a major release," von Tetzchner said in a statement. Opera plans to make its newest browser generally available in 2005. While Opera supports Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, the beta is available for Windows only.

With FireFox gaining a major market share, I think its a really tough time for Opera which has made it to come up with its very new version. Though it provides hefty of services already availabe its still in its amateur stage in competing with the open source king FireFox which provides the most needed Anti Spam blocking aids. Wats Opera's part in antispam is the real question.