racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

One of the things I like best about Google Talk is the automatic logging of conversations–built into Gmail at that! I prefer IMs to be logged because of the following reasons:

* IM is increasingly becoming the business communication method of choice among netrepreneurs like myself–sometimes, email just takes so long for a quick response. So it’s good to have something on record. Email is already recognized as official communication here in the Philippines. As for IM, well, the law’s probably a bit more vague on that. But having a record of IM conversations assures me that I don’t forget anything, and that I can refer back to those chats when the need arises.

* I work on multiple computers. My laptop’s for when I’m mobile, and when I’m writing stuff. My desktop’s for the more power-hungry work (like games!). I like everything to be accessible from both PCs, and even other computers via the Web. Gtalk lets me access my chats from anywhere with a Web browser and a decent connection. Gtalk also lets my correspondent access the same thread over his/her own Gmail account!

However, the same does not go for Yahoo! Messenger, which I think is the IM of choice here in our country. Yes, YM has a lot of snazzy features, but what’s lacking with it is a decent logging capability. Third-party IM apps that run over the Yahoo! network, though, are increasingly getting better at this. And Gaim is one such application. Gaim is popular among the Linux-using crowd, because it lets them (well, us, actually) communicate over various IM networks that do not even release Linux-native clients, such as YM and AOL, for instance. Of course there’s a Windows client, too.

I use Gaim on my laptop, since I feel it has a smaller application footprint than YM (at least when running only over one IM network). I also prefer the clean, tabbed interface over the cluttered IM session windows of YM–something that you would appreciate with limited screen real estate of a laptop. And then there are the plugins. You have different functionalities for everthing from “idle-maker” (lets you pretend you’re actually away from the keyboard/mouse) to spell-checker, to the minute details like iChat-like timestamps.

And of course, what’s best is that you can set Gaim up so it will remember your conversations with your contacts. It may not be over-the-Web logging like Gtalk, but at least you’re sure to have a comprehensive log of your conversations with contacts, arranged by date. You can export this as HTML or text as a whole or on a per-day/session basis. YM does have an export feature for current conversations, but once you close that window (or the app itself), you lose the message thread forever.

I used to use YM on my desktop since I also had to use the video-conferencing feature once (YM supports both audio and video!). But since I rarely use that feature anyway, I think it’s best to switch to Gaim on the desktop from now.