coldDeath

Heh, if i were them i'd keep the money.

They gave you the money probably because you won some competition.

They must think you're a good businessman or something?

But you haven't even thought thi through, and how are you going to make enough profit out of this. I don't even think you will cut even.

__________________

MBirchmeier

Since you seem hellbent on proceeding with this, and i'm feeling a bit less cynical today, perhaps I could offer this bit of advice.

Instead of hiring coders, hire designers to get the job done. This will be beneficial for a few reasons :

1.) Hire designers as opposed to coders at first : It's a lot easier to change things on paper vs. code, and it will be a lot easier to see up front exactly how long this project will take, and what the hardware/software requirements are.
1a) by designers I mean map things out to the detail, from how big the message and memory buffers will be, the format they will take, and what sockets they will use. Screen layout etc. know what will happen when you resize windows, and have numbers and equations to back up your idea.

2.) After design is finished write up a formal set of requirments. By reading the requirements you should be able to know exactly what the program will do. What message gets displayed when your message is too long, what if the internet connection dies, if the server gets a message that's not formatted correct etc.

3.) THEN Get some coders to work on the code design things piece by piece

4.) Get testers to test the pieces when they come in.

This would be the proper way of doing things, and if you decide to stop / delay a step you can look back at what you've done and continue on with things. Until you finalize steps 1 and 2 though, if you expect people to start coding right off there is no way you'll get what you want. Instead you'll just get what the coder thinks you want.

-MBirchmeier