Meebo Auto-Away – Set to Away When Idle is Detected - Joshua Morse, Product Design Leader

Meebo Auto-Away – Set to Away When Idle is Detected

October 24, 2010

This program has been superseded by my Meebo Auto-Away Chrome Extension.

Meebo Auto-Away is a simple program that detects your computer’s idle status and sets your Meebo status to away after a defined amount of idle time.

Background

Over the years, I have used a number of instant messaging aggregators, but my favorite so far has been Meebo, a free, web-based tool that can handle the usual suspects, like AIM and MSN, but also ICQ and Facebook. In addition, because it is web based, I can log on from any computer and access my organized friend list and view the history of my messages.

My major complaint with Meebo has always been that it does not set users to away when the computer has been idle, a feature that is present on most modern instant messaging applications. The reason is that a web application cannot access the operating system to determine how long the computer has been idle. I had hoped that the Meebo notifier, a desktop application, would handle this functionality, but, alas, it does not.

After having several people continue to message me even though I had been away from my computer for hours, I decided that I needed to do something to solve this problem. Meebo has no public API, so I couldn’t simply write a program that checked the computer’s idle status and set a user to away through a backdoor channel.

Instead, I went through the front door, embedding a browser into a .Net application that I’ve christened Meebo Auto-Away. Essentially, a user logs into Meebo through the embedded browser, but Meebo Auto-Away can determin a user’s idle time and set the user to away the same way that a web browser does.

Using Meebo Auto-Away

To use the program, simply download the executable and run it (you will need a Windows computer with .Net installed). After the application starts, you can enter the number of seconds you would like the program to wait before setting you away and the away message you would like displayed. You can then log into Meebo through the embedded web browser. You could actually use Meebo Auto-Away for all of your instant messaging, though I would recommend minimizing it to the system tray and using Meebo in a full browser (Meebo handles multiple sessions very well).

You can save your current idle time and away message values as the default in the file menu. Meebo Auto-Away connects through https, so your session is secure. I do not collect any data from the Meebo Auto-Away application or install any other applications. This is a personal program that I created for my own use, and I am sharing so that others frustrated Meebo users can also enjoy setting their status to away on idle.

If you have any questions or find any bugs, feel free to post them in the comments.

Download

Note that this application is freeware. I am not an employee of Meebo or associated with them in any way, save that I use and appreciate their application. By downloading, you agree that you are using Meebo Auto-Away at your own risk. I am not responsible for any issues that result from using Meebo Auto-Away.

Joshua Morse