Saving IM conversations

Now that I work remotely, an enormous amount of my work is done over IM, and a lot of these conversations have details that I'd like to refer back to (and search) later. I know that several companies make IM archival systems for the financial industry, but for individuals, why isn't there simply a "mail all conversations to foo@bar.com" option on IM clients? Having my IM client silently mail me a timestamped record of the conversation every time I close a conversation window seems like an ideal lightweight solution.

Comments

[chris]

Well, if you used a Mac like I've been telling you to for nearly five years now then you could turn on iChat's option to automatically save all chat transcripts to a folder of your choice.

Wait, you're a software guy and there are open-source AIM clients (in fact Gaim is *still* the #1 most active project on SourceForge). Why don't you add that feature and contribute your changes back?

Also, looking through the feature request list at work, I don't see that you've requested this feature for the IM clients that we make.

You have found three ways to slack all in one. :-)

[Ficus]

Trillian saves a log (or can be made to save a log) of all your IM activity. I don't use Trillian, but some of my friends who do routinely use this feature to bring up embarrassing things I have said during moments of weakness.

[Alex]

You could also try Gush (http://www.2entwine.com/). It also logs IM/jabber/Yahoo! IM conversations AND searches them.