How to check if AIM. YAHOO, MSN users are online?

[scuzzo84]

I cant recall but like most forums, on the bottom of each users post they have an icon if that person supplied thier AIM or YAHOO or whatever name. Now I recall in the past I saw on one forum that the icon changes to green indicating that the user is online. But I cant tell if it was for one of the chat icons or if it was for indicating if the user was on the forum at the moment. If it was for the forum that ok, I can understand how they do that, but if you can indicate if that user is online on that specific chat program that they supplied thier screen name too, then I would like to know how to do this.

[bpat1434]

Heh... wouldn't everyone.

check out Online Status as they provide a service (although you use their code).

I know that for AIM, it's as simple as opening a socket to big.oscar.aol.com/username and getting the response.

Now, here's a site that down in the comments gives a drawn out PHP example of getting user status'.

Yahoo! I don't think uses this, and neither does MSN. But onlinestatus.org has found a way to get it working.