I was asking a Jabber-related question on #joiito (the Joi Ito IRC chat channel), and coincidentally, Joe Hildebrand of Jabber, Inc joined the chat. So, he answered my questions real good!

I started reading Joe's blog and came across this interesting post, Give it a REST? about how the REST style can also work using the Jabber (XMPP) protocol. Definitely interesting.

With the iCite net, there is this idea about content address portability which includes some degree of protocol portability as well. For example, in the iCite net, an iCite should be able to declare its address simultaneously as http://example.com/icite (http) and icite@example.com (smtp, pop or imap) and examplecom@jabber.org/icite (jabber), plus indicate which protocols it requires / prefers for which interactions (e.g., read over http, write over email, authenticate over jabber, etc.).

So, I am imagining a REST-like style of interactions over http, smtp/pop/imap, and jabber, though my first order of business is still making it work in an all http scenario. From there, I will also work on some interactions over XML-RPC, especially to capitalize on the existing blog post APIs for XML-RPC.