I have written a two part article for this months .net magazine detailing how easy it is to write a Google Talk bot with the evented power of Node.js.
“Programming a chat bot was once the domain of the hardcore hacker, tapping packets as they passed over the wire from proprietary client applications to closed source servers, but not any more!”
note
As of 6/2/2103 I have now published this article on my blog.
In issue 225 (out now) you will learn how to build a Google Talk bot that is able to set its own status messages and accept new contact requests. I then follow this up in part two of the tutorial (issue 226 , on sale 28 February) by adding message bounce back and Twitter searching functionality.
Additionally, I give a little bit of history from both Node.js and XMPP/Jabber along with some background on projects and companies that are using Node.js and hiring experts. As an aside there is a micro-tutorial on creating webpages with Node.js using the express framework like the bots demo website.
There is also a demo bot and documentation over at njsbot.simonholywell.com, which is hosted on cloudno.de (Thanks Hans). The source code for the demo site and bot can be found on github.