Chat/Voice/Text

[computerquest]

Hi, I hope this the right forum to post this question. I want to build a video chat voice chat or text chat website that is similar to Omegle/Chatroulette for example. I'm pretty clueless about where to begin. How is such a thing normally implemented? Can someone please give me a brief idea on how to go about it? Links and resources would be really useful. Which technologies are recommended for an anonymous chat? How do I randomly connect up to users who could be anywhere in the world? How do I implement the "Stranger is typing" functionality? Is AJAX used for real-time updating of the chat log? Or, do I use Flash Sockets? What if I want to store the chat log?

 

[berry120]

Out of interest, why not use a solution that already exists? This is a lot of work for someone who is new to prorgamming...