I have an idea for a program that might be useful for people (like me) who work in a distributed environment.
My idea is to provide team members with an easy way to query what I am working on right now. I was thinking of using a web interface, but I really don't want to add more fragmentation to our existing PM software that we use, that is not that effective to determine what a remote worker is currently busy with. This is why I was thinking about Skype.
Basically when a worker sends me a message like !Tasks, a list of tasks I am working on will be displayed back with my uptodate feedback.
This will save me time having to answer constant questions, and at the same time give the PM a feeling that he knows what I'm working on.
I know Skype is pretty much black box, and the API for Skype, really sucks, but it could be useful for this type of thing.
So, I've marked the question as subjective and a community wiki.
As developers and PM's working in a distributed environment, do you think this would be useful? Or do you think there are better ways to skin the cat?
Another thing I was thinking of is an automatic update for my exchange calender, perhaps this would be a more widely acceptable solution.
I guess this is one of those out of the box questions, which will either (hopefully) spark some imaginative ideas, or get flamed (hopefully not).
The crux is, PM's need to know what you're working on. Developers don't want to spend time manually updating their status (or forgetting to do so).
So my babble aside, if not using Skype, how would you go about this?