I am looking to develop a custom web-hosted app that’s both a Content Management System (for consumer-generated and uploaded content), Reporting Database (view data in different formats) and a Social Utility. We are the master site, with infinite User sub-sites that can be linked, with access/permissions. It behaves a lot like facebook, in the sense that facebook lets you enter information, upload files, link to other people’s profiles, and gives others more (or less) access to the things you want them to see.
Essentially, I want to provide users with an online Dashboard through which they can collect, store, manage and share different types of information. They can also export it, encrypted.
In some cases, their “information” will consists of things they type into different fields (like building an online journal and filling out “online forms”. In other cases, the information will be images, videos or audio files that users upload. (For uploaded files, I want there to be a Multimedia Management Center so that a user can “link” files to certain relevant items elsewhere in the database, or move the thumbnail images around easily, with a drag-and-drop approach. I am also curious to know whether it’s possible for images to be “faxed” directly into a web app. That would be a handy feature to have.
I would also like the user to be able to record videos with their webcam directly into the app, so that a separate file upload is not necessary. Is this even possible?
There needs to be sophisticated Search Functionality.
I may want the app to be able to aggregate from other sites, or import from other programs (such as Excel or Word), if this is feasible.
I will definitely want it to make use of the Twitter API, so I can monitor feedback (and maybe other APIs).
It might be nice to integrate with external sites (ie. google calendar), so user can easily jump from my site to some relevant system they use somewhere else.
Additionally, I will be interacting with my users by providing them with my own increasing knowledge base (Tips & Resources).
This will be a subscription-based application: software as a service.
The user interface MUST be gorgeous, intuitive. Ease-of-use is paramount.
Security is extremely important, and I have thoughts of making encryption a key part of the functionality. The only question is how to do this and still allow users to