I'm creating a simple board game version of Village the Game tentatively dubbed "Kenya". You can check out the single player version here: http://www.villagethegame.com/kenya.html I have most of the &#106avascript written up for single player but now I want to continue protyping as a multiplayer thing before I convert into a Facebook app or a Flash game. I've been investigating Google's Talk API as a quick and dirty multiplayer capability but it only works with Google Desktop gadgets and converting my &#106avascript/css/html game to the requisite format will be quite painful. What do you recommend for a simple multiplayer capability while I'm prototyping in &#106avascript? Preferably it could take of advantage of existing user accounts somewhere like Google's Talk API does for Google Desktop Gadgets. So I guess I'm looking for some kind of AJAX api for an existing server that I don't have to manage. Any recommendations?

Sorry I don't know anything which exists. You might have to create some very simple JSP/ASP.net application.

I don't know if Flash/Silverlight allows two clients to communicate directly without a server, using sockets... that could be a quicker way to test stuff.