I'm working on kind of an educational site, where there are teachers and students around the world (potentially). Since it's a non-profit site, and I don't have the need for it to be done tomorrow (kind of a side project of something bigger), I wanted to know the best way to figure out how to do this. I'm not a programmer by trade, I've been on the systems side of things for years, but I understand most technology and the question here is more how to gauge what to do so I can get the right resources in place.

That said... here's what I am looking at. I figure the future is HTML5, and that's probably where I'd rather spend my efforts given that it will be cross platform and without the need for plugins. It will work on mobile as well. Question is, how well does HTML5 handle input media, say desktop capture and camera, or on mobile perhaps, where I'd want to use the user's phone camera, etc.

Second question is dynamic streaming... I've read about MPEG DASH, then there are technologies like Smooth Streaming (which I think given the way Silverlight is going is going to be gone or useless), then also Apple and Flash, but if I'm doing HTML5 it doesn't benefit me. Any ideas here would be really helpful, and the more detail the better! :)

That's about it... there are free chat services out there like using the MSN Web Chat controls (how good they are, I don't know, but worldwide most people have a Hotmail/MSN account) so I can use that for chat. I don't know its limitations of course, but that's something if people know or have suggestions, then I'm all ears.

Thanks for the help, I greatly appreciate it!