We presented how you can automate jobs using cron and at before. However, what if you want to limit a particular task for a certain duration only - say, record an audio stream from 2AM to 3AM only or keep tab if a task hangs or something?

Here's another tip from IBM's Ian Shields on how you can achieve this. Warning though, it requires a little bit of script writing.

One wonders how useful this tip is for desktop users, whose desktops are not on 24x7. What do you think?