http://norman.walsh.name/2009/05/09/imEmail 12 16 2009-05-09T08:35:13-04:00 Norman Walsh 2009 Norman Walsh At the intersection of chat status and email, more useful functionality for both. For years, my strategy for email has been to download it using IMAP or POP, as appropriate, with Fetchmail, run it through procmail, and deliver it locally. Gnus then picks it up from the local spool and does the right thing with it. Since I never interact with the IMAP folders in any other way, I delete mail from the server when I download it. Maybe this isn't strictly necessary, but it's what I do. The download script runs every five minutes, displaying what it collected via Growl. This all works like a charm. Since I got my iPhone, it's also possible for me to look at my inbox on my phone. So, if I step away from my desk for something, it's still possible for me to check my mail. Except, every five minutes my laptop grabs the mail and so there's nothing there for the iPhone to see. Something else that runs on my laptop is Adium. Now, I've never been very good about setting my status in Adium. I tend to just leave it “available” all the time. The trouble with setting it to “Away” is that I never remember to reset it when I return. Then this morning I had a thought…if my “getmail” script was sensitive to my chat status then I could check mail on my phone when I was away and when I returned, I'd be reminded to reset my status. Ten minutes of fiddling with AppleScript to read my status, three or four lines of Perl, and it works like an even better charm. If my chat status is “Available”, then everything works just like it always has. Otherwise, it doesn't collect mail but sends the Growl notice “Skipping mail, not available for chat”. So, if I set my status appropriately before I step away, then my friends and colleagues know I'm away and I can check my messages on my phone. If I forget to reset my status when I return, my mail checking script will remind me. Sometimes it's the little things…