Very cool stuff Mr. Miller! One more step in the war against the machines.

I've never heard of that site, but I have heard of people outsourcing development work to other countries, which could be how they are giving such low rates. It's not a service I would use, but if you are planning on going that route, definitely do your research before giving it a run to make sure you know the trade-offs involved.
(Apologies if this is sent to you again, it did not get tied to your comment the last time I tried replying, and I wanted to be sure it reached you).

Hi Martin,
Thanks for dropping by and commenting. There should be a ton of talented developers in CA. If you don't know of anyone who has worked with a freelancer or shop they recommend, I would not walk into just any shop and have them start building. Take your time to find a freelancer or shop you think will be a good fit. Apps and the people you have build them deserve the same amount of research as other large purchases. As part of your research, when you find someone, have an open conversation with them about their work style. Also, make sure they have a couple of projects under their belt that they can refer you to, so you can see if they are capable of building your app. For example, if you are looking for functionality, and all they have is design work to refer you to, I would look elsewhere.

Section 3 and some of section 2 of the post I wrote for Marion's comment cover some of this if you have not read it already: http://www.trustthisguy.com/so-you-want-to-build-... Hopefully that helps.

Hi Marion,
The response to your questions was a bit large for the comment area, so I made another post: <a href="http://www.trustthisguy.com/so-you-want-to-build-..." target="_blank">http://www.trustthisguy.com/so-you-want-to-build-... Hopefully that covers the majority of what you wanted to know. For the parts that I didn't cover directly in the new post:
Screenshots are not required when working with a good designer. If that is your preferred method for describing the way you want the site to look, however, you can piece them together using image editing software (no web design knowledge necessary).

Your comment about data being arranged differently on spreadsheets and on web applications makes sense. There are sites that do some pretty amazing data visualizations, but the way you display the data really depends on what you are trying to get out of it. Dynamically updating graphs for example, although possible in Excel, are much cleaner to set up in a web application.

Well put sir. I might work for equity for someone I have known for a few years.

Anyone else would need a seriously well written letter of recommendation from one of those people. That and be prepared to divulge everything you have at your disposal that would help the project succeed, and be ready to work side by side until I can trust that you are working harder than I am to make this work.

Hi Carol,
Thank you for stopping in and for the kind words. I may give public speaking a try in the not-so-distant future.