WHY?: Because it's annoying that if you use the same MSN/etc ID at work and at home that you can get stuck in a state where you have two copies running at once and it won't let you log in, or automatically logs you out at one or other locations. That's annoying enough in itself, but the fact that each IM network behaves differently is even worse, so hopefully this plugin can be consistent accross different protocols, and solve the initial problem as well. HOW TO INSTALL: Download the perl file, and install it in your ~/.purple/plugins/ directory. I've fixed the MIME types now (with thanks to Phil Hannent for the heads-up about it). Pidgin needs to be restarted in order to recognise it properly. Complaints about missing auto/Purple/Purple.so can be solved by installing the libpurple-perl package under Fedora. HOW TO CONFIGURE: Go to Tools->Plugins. Find "Office Hours". Make sure it's enabled (unless you're just curious but don't want to actually use it). Click 'Configure Plug-in' to access the configuration dialogue. There are four options at the present time. Office Start Hour = The hour of the day that your work starts (24hr format). Office Start Minute = The minute of the hour that your work starts. Office End Hour = The hour of the day that your work ends (24hr format). Office End Minute = The minute of the hour your work ends. HOW IT WORKS: You should configure these and the plugin will check every $interval (15 minutes, or 900 seconds, hard-coded in the plugin for the time being) whether you are both idle and outside of your office hours. Thus if pidgin is active, the plugin is active, and you idle out while outside your office hours, you will automatically be logged out of all protocols. DEBUGGING: This is the best method I've seen so far: pidgin -d | grep '\(officehours\|plugins:\)' TESTING & TESTED PLATFORMS: Working platforms: - Fedora Core 11, with pidgin-perl and libpurple-perl packages installed. - Ubuntu 9.04 (tested by Phil Hannent) Non-working platforms: - Debian Lenny (5.x), presumably due to the age of the Pidgin version supplied with it (which is 2.4.3). This is one reason why I am switching my workstation back to Fedora, by the way. It's perl so I don't know if it will work on Windows with ActivePerl, but it may do. You'll need POSIX support and the pidgin Perl module code installed. Looks like I have someone willing to test that though, but I think it would be good to see if it works with Adium as well, any volunteers?