Update with regards to server stability ... I've re-built the php build we use for the api with some of the unessential libraries removed, and re-jigged the apache configuration for the api domain so we're going to be able to handle all these requests coming through much more effectively and each api request should have a considerably smaller memory footprint. I've noticed apache has also been serving some of our files and images quite slowly so I may move our hosted files over to a new domain to serve them over lighttpd instead at some point in the future.
On the chat client interface side - presence has been implemented along with invitations and roster management. I've had to do a bit more toying around with character encoding again because a python library is giving me some sass, but that's resolved now.
