Last night I started playing with the idea of setting up a status page for myself, like I have considered many times. This time I took a different approach though, I started designing as a non-functional sample page, something I could build from. I started laying out a variety of ways I could provide information, including last GITI login, XMPP (Instant Messenger) status, if there were assignments due, and a direct statement of status from me. Everything seemed easy enough so I started looking for ways to do the friendliest part first (anything not touching GITI). I went out in search of a simple status component for XMPP. I came up blank for something universal, although, some XMPP servers have an HTTP component built in that will serve such information upon request. I then targeted Google Talk, my primary XMPP service. Nothing really came up… a  few mechanisms to call the information from the server on XMPP itself, but that would imply an active XMPP client is checking for it. I feel as though the functionality I am wanting is something that has to exist in Google, but is just buried deep in the API.

I still haven’t found it, I guess I will keep digging.