Trouble is getting the tools to understand that something else is listening to my IM traffic. If I'm on a Windows box running MSN Messenger I can have the API allow an entirely different program listen to the connection. It can 'listen in' to the traffic and do things. AIM and Yahoo don't allow this. Things that try are hacks, at best. They're forced to either entirely replace the client or try to somehow "hook" their way into the existing client. Hooks into the apps are a hack-job arms race, it's nigh on impossible to do it in a way that doesn't break as soon as the vendor makes even the slightest change to the client. That and most of the IM vendors actually seem bent on deliberately breaking anything that tries. They're fools as this does more to harm them than they realize.

Trouble is, as soon as you leave your desktop and login elsewhere, the interacting agent gets bumped off the connection. So you're back to having to use a separate IM account again. What a pain in the ass.

Progress is being made on this front but it's been very slow in coming.