If you want something simple, you may want to check out Proximity:

http://reduxcomputing.com/proximity.php

It scans for a particular Bluetooth device every X seconds (user configurable), and runs scripts went it goes out of range and re-enters it.

I also ran across MarcoPolo, which is similar but more option-full/advanced/complicated than Proximity:

http://www.symonds.id.au/marcopolo/

It can use Bluetooth devices for actions, but also many other criteria as well.

I'm guessing most of this is Apple based Norm? I was interested till that thought crossed my mind? Perhaps you could tag these apple so we can recognise them as such please (for the non-apple readers)? TIA DaveP

Tracking status automatically based on the presence of my phone, that is a clever idea. I had been using MarcoPolo for a while, but when I decided to conceal my home network's SSID, I didn't really have much use for it anymore. Maybe I'll give this a try.

Hi Dave,

I don't think there's anything Mac specific here. I happen to use Adium, but I expect you could do this with Pidgin. And there must be something equivalent to Growl, though I don't know what it is off the top of my head.

Bummer. Apparently the iPhone BT services are insufficient unto the day.

DaveP, Norm is right.

This can actually be done on (say) Linux as well, as shown by this short Perl script:

        http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=582882

It leverages the hcitool to scan for devices:

        http://linux.die.net/man/1/hcitool

Not sure if there's an equivalent 'scan' utility for OS X.

This post has really raised my curiosity and my 'OCD' has caused be to search for a solution to this "problem". :)

Seems that BluePhoneElite may be a possibility:

        http://mirasoftware.com/BPE2/Help/AppleScript.html

You seem to be overthinking this. Many pop clients can be configured to leave the mail on the server for n days to solve this problem of having more than one machine from which you check email (and also to delete mail locally when deleted from the server). The one thing you lose this way is that all the mail visible from the iphone will appear unread, even if you've read it from the other machine. On the other hand, having 24 hours worth of mail visible from the iphone would let you reply to mail that you had already seen but not replied to, letting you make good use of time in the commode.

You day "overthinking" like it's a bad thing. :-)

Proximity, makes everything pretty easy, and scans real fast. Check it out.