The biggest response I got to Toast, my realtime CouchDB chat server was: "wtf why didn't you use XYZ technology?" The point of developing chat in CouchDB is not to show how CouchDB is an ideal persisted chat server (even if it is). The point is to show how CouchDB's "databasey" features, because they are implemented using HTTP, can be leveraged to make powerful end-user experiences, with just a m