A little shell script that checks to see if a MSN User is Online or Offline, connects to the blockstatus.com site and reports back to you with XYZ is Offline, or XYZ is not Offline
#!/bin/bash id="$1" if [ x"$id" == x ]; then echo "Usage: $0" 1>&2 exit 1 fi curl http://www.blockstatus.com/msn/stchecker -F "msnac=$id" 2>/dev/null | grep "${id}.*Offline" 2>/dev/null 1>&2 if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then echo "$id is Offline" else echo "$id is not Offline" fi