Does the job

I have several hundred Skype contacts and use Skype all day for IM and phone. Its very useful to me to know when some contacts become available, but its extremely annoying to be notified about online presence when I dont care. Contact-specific online presence notification _should_ be built into Skype, but in its absence this app, though far from perfect, does that job. Ive used it for just a week with both Skype 5.3 and 5.5 and it works fine, once I got it going.

First, it uses the Skype Desktop API, so Skype must be running when Contact Alerts starts and stay running. It would be great if Contact Alerts were sophisticated enough to access your account without a Skype client running, but that would require a very different piece of software.

The first time Contact Alerts is run, Skype will ask your permission for it to access your data and register it with the API. Unfortunately, this permissions window is not in front and hidden by Contact Alerts, so youll have to move Contact Alerts aside to see it. If you dont explicitly grant permission, Contact Alerts wont work.

In its preferences, Contact Alerts offers to load on startup. While this would normally be a good thing, it doesnt register its Skype client requirement with the OS, so it loads before the Skype Client and then complains that the client isnt loaded until the Client loads.

As someone who will often spend $10-15 for a special purpose app that saves me a few minutes here and there, the price of Contact Alerts doesnt bother me at all.

Note to the developers: Optional Growl integration would be a very welcome addition, and a short FAQ on your product support page addressing some of the limitations might help make people happier with the product.

jonphipps about Contact Alerts for Skype