83684 eLearning Pay/View Delivery

Discount Learning (DL) is expanding its business into the Pay-Per-View delivery of streamed video combined with other multimedia content. While it's obvious that just about anybody with a video camera and a Quicktime encoder can publish video on the web, it's a whole different thing to collect payment prior to the delivery AND make certain that access privileges (once paid) aren't abused. To remedy this DL has conceptualized a login process (coupled with cookies), the use of back-end database tracking, and a proprietary video encoding/streaming technology that will (hopefully) assure payment prior to the delivery of content AND protect against unauthorized sharing of paid services between multiple workstations. There are multiple facets to this project: - On-Line Credit Card processing... See the following for details on the programming requirements ([login to view URL] and [login to view URL] ) - User registration -- The only thing non-standard about this will be that part of the registration process will be to have the user perform a self-conducted test of browser compability. At the successful completion of the browser compatibility test a cookie will need to be placed onto the user's workstation indicating compatibility. This cookie will be referenced on later logins... a comparison of the current browser (at time of login) vs. the value stored in the cookie. If the customer logs on from another workstation that hasn't been certified (no cookie exists) then the user will need to go through the certification process on the machine being logged in from. - Content delivery tracking per user -- Each educational package is broken down into multiple "chapters." As each chapter is started and eventually completed a back-end database will be modified to show the "In Progess" or "Complete" status of the module. If the user has to take a break, logs off, experiences a crash, or logs in from another workstation, this database will be accessed in order to return the individual to the place where they left off. Ideally, this database will also be used to provide a dynamically created page of HTML that will allow a user to browse a listing of all courses that have been taken, and all courses that are currently in process. - Preload of an HTML page filled with images -- Each "Chapter" of a course is heavily reliant on what could potentially be dozens of images ranging from 10K to 100's of K's. Currently when the chapter begins a video stream is initiated to the browser. Simultaneous, all the images are uploaded to the browser as well. For customers using broadband connections this typically isn't a problem... the bandwidth is adequate enough to handle the video stream AND the simultaneous delivery of still images. For customers connected via standard dial-up modems, however, this simultaneous load of data can overwhelm their thin pipeline... causing unacceptable video and audio dropouts. To resolve this, a Javascript or other type of program needs to be created that will Present the user with a message, "Please wait... Loading Images" while simultaneously loading the images and monitoring the progress of the load. When all images have been loaded the script should automatically advance the user into the lesson where the streamed video will be viewed. So this is a "nutshell" version of the immediate need. I would like to open a dialog with anyone interested in taking up this project. I will provide greater details upon request.