I'm surprised nobody thought of this feature earlier, it's a great idea! I would love to be able to check my IM's while I'm at work or visiting friends.
It'd be much easier for Big-O to do something where say, every 10 new messages you get in away-mode are put all in one e-mail, and sent to you... Maybe have it where you can set up how many messages until it mails you? I get like dozens of messages when I'm away, and I'd hate to have 100 new e-mails... That's an idea... When [ user input ] amount of messages are recieved in [ user input ] mode, then send combined messages to [ user input ] ...
It could also be set up to send an email every X minutes/hours. With the send forward every X messages, you may be sitting on 4 IMs waiting for 5, for example, and never see the 4 IMs. If you had it send every hour, then you wouldn't miss any messages in that manner.
Why not have it so that you can message your computer at home with a specific command and it will e-mail it to you, and just set a maximum number of e-mails per hour to prevent flooding. I could see you using a password, but it would appear in clear text in the IM window on the other computer. Most people have multiple AOL accounts, or when they go somewhere they can use that, or someone else's screenname to check their messages. You could also include an option of "send e-mail when there is more than X amount of messages, or after it has been X amount of time since the last e-mail". *shrug* Just some ideas, peace.
The message a command to send the email is an awesome idea, it could be a little insecure for some users who share computers. Another user could spy the special command, alter the email forwarding address, and "steal" your messages, or something like that :).
This is definitely an interesting idea for someone who is the sole user of the computer ... I like it!
That's why you would have an option so they could turn it off. As for the altering of the e-mail address, just have it set on AIM itself, don't have the e-mail address within the command, just have a set e-mail address that it will always send it to. Anybody who is already on the computer can see the messages anyways.