Web2Messenger
Not long ago - mid-2005, in fact - I wrote myself a small MSN Messenger bot in PHP just as a challenge, really - the same reason I write most PHP scripts. I soon started experimenting with various uses for it such as displaying my MSN Messenger status (including display name and personal message) to forums and also allowing people to send messages from my own website (here) directly to my MSN Messenger account, with the messages being received almost instantly and without me needing to reveal my Passport address, which I like to keep private.
Very soon I had various people - mainly users of the Mess.be forum asking how they could do similar things, mostly the message sending bit. This prompted me to make a few changes to the system to allow others to sign up.
I soon realised the potential for such a system and set about re-writing the entire thing from scratch with scalability and multiple users in mind. That project became Web2Messenger.
At the time the bot was still written in PHP and, while functional, was slower than could be achieved if it was written in a lower-level language. This is where TheBlasphemer (TB) of StuffPlug fame came on board and wrote a dedicated C/C++ bot for the system which delivered messages much faster and consumed much less CPU time and memory than the PHP version had. TB has since written various other parts of the system, including our Status Images [no small task] and advertising scripts.
Between July and September 2005 Web2Messenger has grown in popularity and at the time of writing has over 3,000 users and has delivered over 16,000 messages. TB and myself are continuing to improve the service on a daily basis and have no intention of ceasing development in the near future.
For more information please see the Web2Messenger website!
