Make your own IM bot in Ruby, and interface it with your Rails app

Make your own IM bot in Ruby, and interface it with your Rails app:

"What about your average Joe on the street, how come they get forced into having to log in to the site to update their data, etc.? Why not provide a means of carrying out simple tasks in an application they probably already have? And so an Instant Messaging interface was designed to send a instruction to a robot, and it’s relatively simple to get setup."

I have been thinking a lot lately about providing API's through IM or Email. If you think about it, Unix geeks have interacted with complex systems with three letter commands, manpages and the every helpful -h option on everything. Why not allow users to the same flexibility, because believe it or not, you new fancy web 2.0 application is way simpler than 'ps' or 'top'.