[FutureSOCProjects] - Tiezones / Geo-Locations

[David King]

Hey all!

I've just signed up specifically to post this idea, but I'll no doubt 
keep my ear to the list for some time to come...

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Anyhow, I realised a while ago that nearly all of my contacts are in 
different bloody time-zones / countries, and I have difficulty keeping 
track of whether its an ungodly hour when I open up conversations! 
Obviously if people only "go online" when they're actually there, it's 
never an issue, but loads of people leave their machines running 
overnight and it's not exactly a great sign of presence.

So, the idea is simple, have an extra parameter stored with each buddy 
that is "country/timezone" that will store the time offset, and country 
code. This could then be used to enhance general features of the program 
for example:

   * When you open a new convo, start it with a notifications like so:
      "It is 4am in Belgium"
   * Stamp messages with users local time (optional) - in the logs and
      internal functions it'd probably be best to just stamp everything
       in UTC, and note the offsets
   * Extra info in the buddies list for locale time - could make it
      graphical by shading the buddy, or having sun/moon GFX etc
   * Optional flags can be added about the place for extra pleasure -
      I understand that Pidgin is lightwieght and this goes against it
      somewhat, but user experience is a factor that is useful!
     Personally I'd love to see flags (or avatars) alongside the names
      mid conversation, especially handy in big group meetings.

I'm sure I could go on, but hey, lets not ever egg it! Hawhaw

Now, I'm a (pretty good) web-programmer, I've never touched C, GLib or 
GTK, although I am aware of what they are and what they do! So, if 
there's anyone that would like to take on this idea, I'd be much 
obliged, I'm willing (and able) to plan out the whole project and gather 
all the relevant data and research to make sure it goes smoothly!

Resources to help hit the ground running:

   Country codes
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2
   Timezones
     http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/info/timezone.htm
   Flags (named according to the ISO 3166 Alpha 2 above)
     http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/flags/

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Regards,
David King
http://oopstudios.com/