Hi Robert,
I joined freelancer just after hearing about this chat server project from one of my friend.
The kind of project you are having, i have worked for the same. I have developed a chat Server for the Utl technologies, bangaore, India using C/C++ ,BREW(Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) MP framework on mobile platform. Now i am working on iphones and windows mobile.
I am really interested to do this project. And yes, this is not an easy project, there are lot of dependencies we will face while development. So the whole thing must be go step by step otherwise it will become combersome.
I am interested in doing the server part, and the client on the windows mobile, android, iphone and java.
Looking forward to get a chance to do this work.