another web2.0 site

You have a Mac. You have Apache built in and PHP and MySQL are easily installed as well. Aaron and I both run dedicated test servers on our machines for testing and portability reasons.

For someone that knows nothing about web tech in a practical hands on professional side you have one hell of a daunting task ahead. Tossing around concepts of interfaces and mashing up tech is fine and all, but building them even when you do this for a living is a HUGE time suck and requires a lot of problem solving within these different elements of tech. You start talking video and transcoding and I'll lay it for you brutally - it's an effing pain in the ass and a lot of time to get it to work with everything and make it look good.

Before you go out buy server space and such you should get your hands dirty and see if you're going to be able to produce all the code and do the development and engineering that's involved. If not, then you have to find those that can and share your vision. What I hear is a happy thought full of buzz terms and over simplification of what goes into all of this.

If you really want to get into this tech world then I also suggest you start investigating your market you hope to get into and make sure that your offering is unique enough to make you stand out. You used the term "bubble" which I believe exists only because of the "me too" nature. Make sure you're not a "me too" if you want to get into this game. Start filling up your RSS reader with all the tech blogs. Make sure you know what you want now and have a clear vision of where things will be in 3+ years.

For now I'd say keep it fun and as a project you can learn all of the tech aspects with. Get books on CSS, PHP, and MySQL. Tinker and have fun.

things are much clearing than i made them seem in my post. right now it is just a side proj. kyle and i have been tinkering with. neither of us know much about web architecture. i understand databases, at least access and filemaker. not mysql but i assume knowing those other ones pretty well is better than nothing. what i am looking for is more book titles. software, because we have been going through the design stages concept, design ideas, what would be required. the design process basically. i am hoping over my winter break i can sit and learn about coding, and basically as much of infastructure of sites as i can. it is extremely time consuming and complex, that i realize. we both really want to make it happen and do have the capabilites. also i want it to be a huge learning project for me. honestly even if it never gets off the ground but i get it built i would be happy. although my goal is to get it running. im working on a business plan/evolutionary model of the site i guess you could call it. im just looking for any suggestion you or anyone else has. that could save me money on books, and help me avoid making huge time consuming mistakes using the wrong coding for things. my idea while not completely revolutionary is different than anything we've seen yet and we both read tons and tons of tech everything all day for years and years. any input anyone has is great.

PHP is a really great language for the web. It's scalable, and well supported, there are some quality frameworks out there for it which can speed up and help guide your development.

RoR is great for getting started quick, but there are debates as to how well it can scale. Ruby is a fun language too.

Django (a framework for Python) is supposed to be pretty sweet too, but I haven't played with it personally (I'm not a big fan of Python).

Video conferencing, totally doable: Check out Flash Media Server from Adobe, though there are some licensing requirements that will set you back. You can also check out Red5 which is an OSS version of FMS (I think it's written in JAVA).

Like Ryan says, transcoding video is a dark art, but if you're just trying to host it in its native format and let people play it back, there's really nothing complicated in that.

SQL was designed to be a language that business managers could use, so it's fairly friendly to do most basic tasks. If you understand DB fundamentals, you'll probably be able to get going w/ MySQL fairly quickly.

I know several people who like http://www.mediatemple... for hosting. They have some sort of grid service computing that lets them reallocate resources your way if your traffic unexpectedly grows (digg, slashdot, etc). There are even cheaper alternatives out there: dreamhost, 1and1 are two others I've heard people have good experiences with.

I hope some of this was helpful, and good luck on the app! I look forward to hearing more about it. :]

first off i wanna say hey i havent talked to u yet so nice to meet u lol
and second i think its cool u wanna build a website ... what kind of website? and i actually do know a lil bit about computers it goes way back to senor yr in highschool tho loli know about the c++ and html codings and i know if u wanna a website a good one ur gonna need a strong network and stron server. i could be wrong but thats what i was told and cost wise no idea.