The trend towards mobiles as the platform of choice and the browser as the application of choice doesn't seem to be slowing much, in fact, it seems to be accelerating. This, part of a series, will explore web based and broswer based applications that attempt to offer services that would normally be a part of a larger package or is proprietary software that you need a licence and would install directly on your computer.
Call it 'the return of the mainframe', also known as cloud computing for the masses.
Roxer, (link: www.roxer.com) is a web based website builder. This is most useful for small businesses or people who wish to share graphics and pictures in a different layout than most blogs will offer in the standard format. Blogs still have their place but this is really quite fun to play with and offers a method of building a site without knowing a single bit of code. It's quite visual and very simple. It officially supports English but currently the largest user groups are building pages in Spanish, Italian, German, and Malay, according to Lex Arquette, founder of Roxer.
Their revenue model uses ads to support the free accounts and at a small price you can choose an ad-free premium account. This includes a small amount of text advertising across the top of each page. Lex says that: 'It's very important to us that we don't detract from the overall feel of the users web page, and have found this to be the best compromise.'
Lex has been working on Roxer as his late-night side project for 4 years. He's had additional help for the last two years and it now is a full-time project for himself with two part-timers. This project uses Amazon's EC2 - resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Roxer is hoping to look for capital and funding Q4 of 2008 as it ramps up development.
For the inspiration and drive that Lex has in building Roxer we'll let him speak directly:
'The idea has been floating around in my head for almost as long as I've been designing web pages. What I love about web design, compared to other types of programming, is the transparency and availability of the finished product. What I mean by 'transparency' is that you can visit any web page and 'view source' to instantly see the spinning gears that make it work. You can then improve upon what you see, build it into your own work, and let the cycle continue. By 'availability' I mean that you don't have to go through hoops to use the finished product. Most software requires downloading, installation wizards, etc - web pages however are instantly available and ready to be used.
'This transparency and availability provides a wonderful distribution model, but I felt it could still be improved. Ultimately what I wanted was to simply be able to 'copy' parts of web page onto my own. I don't mean just text, I mean any functional piece like a search bar, image rollover, calendar, video, anything; and I wanted to be able to tweak it a bit to fit my needs. I wanted everything to be portable and sharable. For this to work, code would need to be compartmentalized. This led to the idea of 'Boxes', which act as sort of a container for code. Once this was built the rest of Roxer's interface fell into place quite nicely - drag & drop, resizing, configuring; all of this just seemed to be the natural next step.'
Lex has experience in the field most notably with Jeremiah Grossman and Llana Grossman on a number of projects over the past 10 years. Most recently, they founded WhiteHat Security seven years ago which has since grown to 50 employees and has carved out a strong position in the web security industry.
Roxer, www.roxer.com, is now available in beta. Thank goodness ICANN has relaxed its rules for domain names as this just might spur new and inventive domain name requests. X
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