The problem: I use at least three different computers on a regular basis (my desktop machine, a ThinkPad, and a massive Dell notebook). I do a lot of my work in chat and IRC, and I log everything — I want the logs backed up and searchable in one convenient location.
Any good ways to do this? Note, using Pidgin for AIM, GTalk, and GroupWise chat, and Konversation for IRC. I guess I could rsync the notebooks to different directories (to avoid overwriting any of the logs with the same names) the desktop machine and back up from there. Seems clumsy, though — any other methods that would work well?
This is hardly precisely what you’re looking for, but the most obvious and simplistic solution to your problem would be running Irssi (or some other console IRC client) in GNU Screen session on some *nix box, preferably a well backed up server running behind a reliable Internet connection. You’d connect to this machine with SSH from anywhere and reattach your screen session with your IRC client (that never needs to be shut down).
As you need other chat protocols than IRC, you could run BitlBee, a IM (the most popular protocols) to IRC gateway, and you’d be all set up to run Irssi as your only chat client (as long as you don’t need any of those terrible graphical smilies or video conferencing).
If you log all your chat logs properly with Irssi (link to a somewhat decent configuration) you can search them with the usual Unix command line tools. Irssi and greppable log files are real sanity savers for me at this point.