Websockets and more: awesome node.js npm modules we use every day

"Websockets: Everyone uses socket.io and for good reason."

This is stated as a fact, but I really just think it is a case of this was the only choice for a long time. I'd like to know the reason, because I don't think there is a clear one here. Other than socket.io couples a ton of baked in functionality, what's the benefit of it over sock.js or just native websockets?

I've always wanted to use mongodb as my primary data storage due to its convenience and all.

But how it's consuming all my memory has always been a problem, at least to me. (And afaik, it's currently not possible to limit its memory usage)

Do you use a dedicated Mongodb server with huge amount of RAM for this?

Well these guys should use node.js for their blog as well, and maybe it would not be down due to heavy HN traffic ;)

Nice stuff, thanks for the round up, this vast amount of packages coming out get out of hand or go by unnoticed easily. Got some work coming up that I may well do with node, so. Thanks.

Great idea, great post! Thanks.