New Opera bigger than the Death Star?

Almost 1.2 million stormtroopers, droids and janitors can fit into a fully operational Death Star. Nearly 11 million people follow Lady Gaga on Twitter. Now, Opera aims to put those numbers to shame with the number of downloads for its newest browser.

Opera today released its latest desktop operating system РOpera 11.50, which introduces a new and novel type of browser extension: Speed Dial extensions. Instead of handy thumbnails and links to your top sites, you can embed your Speed Dial with extensions that keep you updated—instantly—on what is happening around the Web. Take weather updates, for example. Why click through to a website when you can get the current conditions live at a glance? Or, why not be the first to know the hot news of the day just by opening a new tab? We think Speed Dial extensions are a smarter way of getting to the content you want and need.

But don’t take it only from us:

Read It Later’s Speed Dial extension suggests an article to read from your reading list.

Webdoc, a new way to mix media of any kind, developed a Speed Dial extension that allows you to create interactive web posts in a few clicks.

The Hype Machine, a popular music service that tracks emerging artists on blogs, made a Speed Dial extension that features the most popular tracks of the moment, giving you an easy way to stay on top.

With StockTwits you can share real-time information and ideas about stocks. Using their Speed Dial extension you’ll get instant access to a passionate community to see which stocks are trending right now.

“We’re excited about the work that has gone into Opera 11.50,”” said Jan Standal, VP of Desktop Products, Opera Software. “”Before we challenge Lady Gaga though, we’ve got to surpass the Tom Selleck moustache fan page on Facebook and the number of forum posts Opera fan Tamil has written. We think Speed Dial extensions are amazing enough to do the trick, but we didn’t stop there.””

No we didn’t, Jan. Here are all the other things we added to make Opera 11.50 worthy of being your next browser:

Our mothers are so proud of us. We worked long and hard to bring you the best Opera browser yet. We even took pictures to prove it: http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/brains-in-action/

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