What i want to be able to do is interact with programs (like AIM) and get data from it. For example I want to be able to check my buddy list and log every time someone comes on the list and record it in my program. Is there a way to do this? Like i could check it every 5 minutes or so to see if someone is online or not. IS there a way for me to interact in this way with this and other programs?

All help is appreciated, little or a lot
thanks
doug