I am working on something exactly like this, but as an open-source NodeJS project.. it lets you define a parameter (by default, session_id) and then checks a memcache instance for that key, and uses that to get access to channels with a specific prefix (by default "user:")... so you can have a channel "user:34343". This shoves authentication back into your app with the only dependency being a memcache instance shared by the NodeJS server and the web server. All of the other communication is similarly RESTful. if you want an email when i've got more to show, let me know.