Venture Concept No. 2

 Dylan McClure

ENT3003

Quantem Web Browser – Business Venture

Web browsers have come a very long way, but they could be even better with a little bit of innovation. By utilizing the already flourishing protocol, HTTP, and trying to streamline the process and make things more efficient, the current process of modern day web browsers could become even better and faster. As the project would be open source, anyone from all over the world would be able to work on it, but it would be up to the creators of websites to add these little snippets that would then be interpreted by the Quantem Web Browser so that they could do things that no other website has been able to do before. JavaScript, the programming language for HTML (a language that represents web content for webpages), allows website creators and maintainers to create a lot of fancy effects and even provide a lot of nice functionality from menus to performing actions based on mouse clicks among other higher-level tasks that are either useful or nice effects.

Innovation:

The Quantem Web Browser will, among other things, provide very easy and secure way to write code that will interact with users (via the mouse and keyboard). Of course, the web browser will still have a JavaScript engine that will be able to parse JavaScript and be able to interpret HTML and CSS and render websites correctly, but the Quantem Web Browser will also be able to interpret special code snippets, called Quantem Code, that can be inserted via comments in the HTML. The main features (at least in the beginning) will be clean, interactive menus, diagrams and charts, . It's also important to note that a particular variable would be set to notify JavaScript if Quantem Code is being used (this is quite useful since Quantem Code might actually replace certain functionality implemented by JavaScript). Note that these features would only be usable in web browsers that use the Quantem Parser (the parser that is the entire reason the Quantem Web Browser is being used). Since the web browser will be open source, money cannot be made off of the software itself. Therefore, the money will come from advertisements on the website. Also, as the creator(s) of the software, the initial developer(s) may gain recognition in the software community, which is – undoubtedly – important. Quantem Code will very much resemble JavaScript as it will be very easy to code in while performing a lot of functionality, however the main difference is how Quantem Code will go about modifying things on the screen. If we can have 3-dimensional graphics that can render things almost flawlessly in real time, then we can have

Opportunity:

The Quantem Web Browser would almost certainly be able to enter the market because not only is it building off of the success of modern websites and not trying to veer too far from the course, it would provide a lot of benefits and power that websites simply don't have today. The website would be extremely secure (especially in the beginning) because, not only would all security breaches be looked at as soon as possible, but the protocol wouldn't really be “hackable” because the protocol used by the Quantem Web Browser would not be known – for example, Microsoft Windows and JavaScript are common sources of hacks because the protocol for both are very well known and used a lot. Of course, as the software became more used, the security risks would dramatically increase, but hopefully by then there will be a community that will be maintaining the software and continuing the advancement of the security of the software. If not, then the creator(s) and/or maintainers of the web browser would continue the security updates.

The biggest flaw with JavaScript is the security issues with which many are familiar. Even though there are often restrictions imposed on JavaScript that is executed, malicious code can still often be executed complying with the restrictions. The most common forms of malicious JavaScript code utilize obfuscation, “drive-by download” attacks using iframe attacks and other commonplace tricks that try to get the the user to permit the malware to do what it wants to do (like download things or get information). JavaScript malware attacks have grown significantly in the past five years, and although security updates try to counterbalance this, it seems like there will always be attacks on JavaScript because it is particularly lucrative according to various sources and there is a lot of room to be creative.

Because of the security problems with JavaScript, there is room for the Quantem Web Browser to take a hold of this place in the market, but the biggest problem, it seems, is getting the developers of websites to start to use this. JavaScript faced a similar problem initially; at first there was just HTML (a markup language which represents web content like text and images and has a limited ability to make things look pretty or place things properly) and CSS (which is a style sheet language that describes the appearance and presentation of the document markup). Then JavaScript came along and provided website developers to make their websites more responsive. The website creators/maintainers, however, had to write code that used JavaScript and then import that in their HTML. So, JavaScript had to start somewhere, and people had to start to put the code in their websites. Similarly, the Quantem Web Browser would provide, as explained briefly in the Product section, a new, efficient and easily producible way to interact with the user. Since the code to do this would be hidden in the comments of the HTML, people would be able to write code specifically for the Quantem Web Browser. As the Quantem Code – as the code that is specific to the Quantem Web Browser is called – would overwrite certain aspects of the original web content (like JavaScript), websites written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript would still work exactly the same as they did before, but the Quantem Code would allow websites viewed in the Quantem Web Browser to be particularly useful, fast and clean-looking.

Based on what has been discussed above, it is clear that the customers are both developers of websites as well as users of websites – which is a market that encompasses nearly everyone in the world that owns a computer. If this does, in fact, gain a hold, then this product has the potential to get as big as JavaScript has become. The main source of revenue would be a website for the web browser (which would have advertisements), since the project would be open source (people can view and modify the source code without restriction – to an extent depending on the license it uses. The window of opportunity for the browser will be there perhaps for another few years or at least until another major web browser comes out. Perhaps even JavaScript could be updated to allow for greater functionality that is less expensive (because it is fairly resource intensive as it is now), but this is highly unlikely to happen.

Venture Concept:

The Quantem Web Browser will, undoubtedly, be one one of the best web browsers available for a variety of reasons and – with the proper marketing – should have no problem growing its user base almost exponentially at first. The primary reason everyone should switch upon completion of the project is because it will be one of the fastest web browsers available. Every aspect of the web browser will be geared towards making it extremely fast. In particular the way that the web content gets interpreted and displayed will certainly be faster than it is currently. It is time (finally) for web browsers to catch up to their potential. Security, of course, is a major issue also that will attract users.

It seems biggest obstacle to getting users to switch is that they already have a preferred web browser that they have been using for a while. In order to overcome this, the web browser will be designed to be as intuitive as possible. The layout menu and everything inside the browser will all be designed by hand; everything in the menu and settings will be as easy to configure as possible while allowing the user to only have to click 4 times (maximum) in order to get where he or she needs to. Most things will probably be one or two clicks away, and everything will have a keyboard shortcut. Secondly, there will bee an option to import your bookmarks from Chrome and Firefox. Since these are the two most popular web browsers, it will be very easy for most people to just click a button and get all of their bookmarks from either or both Chrome and Firefox.

Security is also a major concern for many but because JavaScript can be overwritten by Quantem Code, there is a way to provide more functionality (more so than JavaScript) but also eliminate all of the security flaws that come with JavaScript. I expect that if Quantem Code is sufficiently comprehensive and mature enough, then it could be almost as big and maybe even bigger than JavaScript. Additionally, there will be major security measures that attempt to protect the users anonymity more so than any other web browser. Developers of websites shouldn't know your location and name or anything personal about you. Although this is good for certain things, it really just infringes on the rights of the users.

The competition that the Quantem Web Browser and the Quantem Parser are fierce, but with time, a lot of effort and the right marketing, they have the ability to outrun their competitors. Although Chrome and Firefox are already large organizations and they – along with JavaScript – have a large user base, what they don't have is a fresh start. All three of these pieces of software are stuck in a rut; they have no hope of just starting over and making things as efficiently and intelligently as they can. That is why, with a significant amount of effort, the Quantem Web Browser and the parser would enter the market and takeover the web browser industry.

In order to get the first few prototypes out and then continue the development of the Quantem Web Browser and the Quantem Parser, a lot of volunteers are going to have to invest a significant amount of time. In order to do this, a source code management system, git, will be used to maintain all of the source code so that developers can work alongside one another in order to make the browser a success. The source code will be hosted on the popular website github since this is secure and very easy for people to interact as it has a lot of functionality.

Celebrating Failure

I have been working on a mobile application in Android Studio for the Android operating system, and there was a period of about a month that my progress slowed to a near stand still. Android is notoriously difficult to get to work well, but I was having trouble getting it to work whatsoever. I was trying to get tabs on the bottom of the home-screen that switched between fragments. For some reason I could make no progress. I could easily blame it on the fact that Android is very hard to develop in, but really it was my fault for not putting in the research and trying every permutation that might work. It took me a month, but one day - during a "work session" with my friends, I sat down and actually got sort of mad (because I hadn't made any progress). I tried to limit the task to getting simple tabs that switched between fragments, whereas before I was trying to create tabs on the fly within another mobile application that already had a home-screen. It took me all day to figure this out (it actually was fairly hard to create the tab-fragments, but after a lot of perseverance, I finally got it to work.

From this, I learned - yet again - that we are really capable of more than we think. All of us are simply human, and this entails sub par work ethic in many circumstances. I think that the more that we can improve our work ethic and drive (which means each of us needs to find what we are passionate about and put in the hours to improve our skills), the better the world will be and the more we will achieve. I have seen this multiple times ever since I have started programming - I will start a project, and it will become more difficult than I had originally imagined; I want to give up, but the times that I don't throw in the towel have yielded the best results. In this case, I was stuck on a difficult problem (for me at least it was quite frustrating because every single tutorial on google didn't work), and I finally got the tabs to work after I had been working for so long on them without any progress whatsoever.

I have always hated failure, even been scared of it, but my mom has taught me - and myself, as well, has learned - that failure is how you mature, but you have to learn from it. The most successful, smartest, most creative minds that have, do and will roamed the Earth have always accepted failure and used it to their advantage as well as persevered in times of severe hardship. People like Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo Galilei fought through wars and imprisonment, but their ideas have lived on to this day because they didn't give up - even when they failted; even when obstacles seemed insurmountable; even when all hope seemed lost for their ideas. Albert Einstein among many other geniuses, as those mentioned above, have been doubted, imprisoned, killed, etc. and if they had simply given in, then their ideas, their knowledge, would have been lost to history, and who knows how far back that would have set us - in fact, we might never have caught up to where we are today. Human ambition and perseverance seems to rival that of the universe itself on many levels. There are many, many obstacles, both man-made and those created by the nature of our planet or the universe, but many of them seem overcome-able. All we have to do is learn from our mistakes and persevere.

My Exit Strategy

(1)
Exit Strategy
I intend to start to develop the software and then have it become and open source project. This would mean that developers that are better and smarter than me can undertake the project and bring the web browser to its fullest potential . Maybe I could still remain head of thee development and maybe make money off of advertisements. At the very least, I plan on maintaining the main website for the home page of the web browser - and this weeb page would run advertisements that would make me money.

(2)
Reasoning
I decided to use this exit strategy because I cannot really make money off of the web browser itself, but I can make money off of the home page. Additionally, the web browser itself would require a lot of work, but I feel as though everyone else in the software community could do a much better job and get it done much more quickly since there are more of them and they are smart.

(3)
Exit Strategy Influence
My exit strategy isn't really spectacular or game-changing, so it hasn't really influenced much of any of my decisions. I will say that it does seem like it makes the project more viable since I could simply start the project myself and then - since it would be open source - rely on everyone else to finish the project for me.