HELLO NAIRALAND,
FIRST I LIKE TO COMMEND THE INICIATIVE BEHIND THIS FORUM.I DID A LITTLE PROGRAMING IN IFE,THEN SHIFTED METALURGY AND MATERIAL ENGINEERING.RECENTLY I JUST GOT BACK INTO PROGRAMING AND I THINK I AM QUITE RUSTY.
ANYWAY, I HAVE TWO PROJECTES I AM WORKING ON,

THE FIRST ONE IS A WEB BASED APPLICATION THAT ALLOWS USERS TO UPLOAD PICTURES,COUNTS PICTURES UPLOADED,EDIT THEM IF NECESARY,CHOOSE THE PRINT SIZE,PAY OVER THE INTERNET AND HAVE THIS REQUEST PROCESSED AND PRINTED OUT AT THE OTHER END OF THE INTERNET(MY END).

THE SECOND ONE IS A WEB-BASED CINEMA WHERE PEOPLE CAN SEE LATEST FILMS, PAY FOR THEM AND WATCH THEM ON THE INTERNET.

ANY RECOMMENDATION WILL BE APPRECIATED BECAUSE I HAVE A DEADLINE TO PRESENT MY ARGUMENT.IF YOU HAVE A SIMILAR PROJECT LETS TALK!!

First what and where are you target markets. Nigerians or who?

when building a software solution , one should be calculative about the returns you are going to yield from it. For that of a portal where pictures and files can be uploaded and edited how do you intend making revenue from it . Is it going be a virtual server for file sharing like what we have on www.yousendit.com I just can't get what this system would do from what you said.

Also secondly that of the online cinema If your target market is Nigeria , then you need to consider you clients. About 70% of Nigerians use Cyber cafe and we all know what the speed is like even fortunate ones use dial up connections and displaying a video over the internet requires high connection. Streaming would be a big problem as the person would end up downloading for good 3-5 hrs for a movie of just 30 minutes then in that case you will be losing you client.

Did you check the issue of copyright . Because you going to be on the World Wide Web don't you think you need license to broadcast movies ? if you don't , shutting you down is just with a click. If you can get in partnership with Silver Bird cinema and sell the package so that they can implement it into their website , I am sure they have some kind of license to broadcast.

When all this are completed and the need for the online cinema still remains in progress then I will suggest this be done in flash using action script to make the file less heavy for download and play should only begin when whole data is fully downloaded.

How many Cyber Cafe have flash player installed ?

For the Site that allows for Pictures to be uploaded, edited and then Sent To You for printing,

a) You can for each session create a unique key to handle counting of how many pictures were uploaded Or you can ask users to create accounts and they can select the users they would like to print, from their user Album

b) For editing pictures, there is a tool called PICNIK www.picnik.com. Really nice online editing tool that allows users do online what they would have had to do in say Adobe photoshop

Did you pursue this dream further? just curious.