What I would like to do is mimic how Wordpress shows an administrator how many new updates there are for installed plugins (a tiny number displayed next to a link). The main difference is that I want to serve this info to a logged-in user on the front end (since they last visited):
Not sure where to find the code that provides plugin update notices but that would be a start...
As far as display goes, the admin code does this in several ways.
Items 2 and 3 get their information via a handshake with the api.wordpress.org server.
Item 1's code can (mostly) be found in wp-admin/users.php. I would go into more detail, but my wife just told me to 'Get the hell off the computer because we're going to the beach.' Bye!
Surely the thing to do would be to provide some kind of buddy press feed per user for each of those types of info and then just use the rss feed code to display the items on the wp blog? Assuming that somehow you know who belongs to which.
That would make more sense than trying to mess with plugin update codes
