Facebook's built-in chat service is convenient, but where it lacks when compared to software-based chat tools is in letting users log past conversations. Facebook intentionally does not save full conversations, however it does keep a few lines from the last time you chatted with someone so you can pick up where you left off.
If you're looking for more though, there's a new Firefox add-on called Facebook Chat History Manager that saves all of your conversations locally. As long as you're using the browser with it installed, it saves everything and puts it into a log that can be filtered by friend or date. There is, however, no search function, so if you're looking for a specific word or phrase from a past chat, you'll have to view all your chats on one page, then use Firefox's built-in search tool. Hopefully a later version will add a way to search from the local index.
Since the extension saves all of your chats locally, you're totally hosed if your computer gets lost, stolen, or suffers failed hard drive. On the flip side of that, the chat log viewer is password protected, so there are no worries of someone else gaining access to your entire chat history.
If you're a heavy Facebook chat user who does not access the service through a software chat client, this extension is one of the easiest ways to log your chats, and definitely worth the download.
FB Chat History saves all your Facebook conversations as long as you're using the machine with the extension installed.
(Credit: CNET)The move to archive nearly everything we do online has been spearheaded mainly by Google in both Gmail as well as Google Web history. The same thing is happening in the chat space with Meebo and Google Talk, as well as desktop chat clients that have had integrated chat logging for years now. The one thing missing has been a way to take those locally saved conversations and make them available for search and reading while away from your home machine. IM History and Simkl are two companies have jumped on the task in an attempt to let people archive everything they've talked about, as long as they're willing to trust their log-in information to a third party. Like financial service Mint, that trust is rewarded with tools that let you get more out of each service than originally intended.
Between the two, IM History released first, and at the moment is the only one of the two that doesn't require an invitation to use. The service went 1.0 last week and supports six popular chat protocols, as well as desktop chat application Trillian. Windows users install a small app that sits on the taskbar and monitors any or all of the supported chat programs that have been setup to get cached. There's also a version for Linux users that works with the Pidgin multiclient chat application. Both versions quietly record your conversations and send them to a private server where you can come back and view them while away from the home machine.
The other new app is Simkl, which is still in private beta and has a nearly identical feature set to IM History, although Simkl takes a slightly different approach by forgoing software in place of having users manually route their messages through a proxy server. This takes a little more work on the part of the user, but the payoff is not having to install an application that may lose its efficacy on applications as they get updated. The service also provides how-to's that let you mindlessly set up each client.
The draw of both of these services is that once you've got them configured on one or more of your machines, it'll track your chats and make them available via separate gateway sites. IM History has the added benefit of letting you access that same information from the desktop application when you double-click the icon. It's a nice touch.
Between the two I'm partial to IM History because I prefer its more robust history browser. But I'm honestly too wary of the idea, no matter how good the execution is because of the potential security problems of having your IM logs sitting on someone else's servers. CNET and many other companies don't allow chat logging, and before using either of these solutions in the workplace you should check with your IT department.
Since Simkl is still in private beta for the time being, the folks there were nice enough to hook up Webware readers with some invites. There are 500 available, and to use them, just use "Webware" (no quotation marks) in as the invitation code when signing up.
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