Review: IM archiving on dexrex.com
June 24, 2008 on 11:33 am | In Other services | 13 Comments
I came across a new online service today called dexrex.com whose tagline is “Saving your world one message at a time”. It’s designed to archive your instant message conversations on Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, Windows Live, Google Talk, Skype and Jabber (Windows versions only). It can also archive SMS conversations from your mobile phone, including Blackberry.
I gave it a test run to see how it did with archiving my Yahoo! Messenger conversations. The first step was to sign in with my Yahoo! ID and password. After that, I had to download and install a small Dexrex extension file to enable the capture and archive of my IM conversations in real-time. Installing the extension was painless and immediately, my IM conversations were captured in the background and uploaded to my dexrex.com account.
There is also a link to import your old IM conversations. After installing Java 6 on my PC at their suggestion, a scan was started to find the archives on my PC. It hung and didn’t really work for me, but in theory, you can get your old conversations imported and stored in your dexrex.com account.
Once your conversations are archived, you can use dexrex.com’s search box to quickly find a message. Dexrex has some handy automatic filters like one that lists out web links from your conversations. So rather than trying to remember a website a friend sent, just glance at the “Links” section in the sidebar to find it. They do the same auto-filtering for phone numbers and email addresses that appear in your conversations.
Dexrex also offers the ability to share a conversation with friends. When you click the “Share” link under a conversation, a page appears offering you a URL you can then send out to friends. When friends visit that URL, they’ll be able to read the transcript of your IM conversation on dexrex.com. If you change your mind, there is always a “Stop Sharing” button to make the conversation private again. You can also edit individual conversations to remove lines or to delete the entire conversation.
And finally there is an “Analyze” tab on the site where they’ll show you interesting statistics and trends about your conversations (like the average number of messages you send and duration of your conversations). This part of the site did not load properly for me but it may have been due to me only having a few hours worth of conversations archived.
Dexrex.com can be very handy for helping you organize and access your IM conversations. The search function works well and considering it’s free, it’s a nice add-on to your IM program. Keep in mind that you are storing your private conversations on a website, so if you have concerns about maintaining ultimate privacy, dexrex.com may not be the solution for you. According to their FAQ, all messages transmitted from your PC to dexrex.com via the extension are encrypted and there is an additional “Lockdown” feature you can add to your account for extra protection.
I was impressed by the ease in which I could search, filter, edit and delete conversations. In addition if you change your mind about using dexrex.com, there is a “Delete Account” button under the “My Account” section which will wipe out your archive. If you do that, be sure to also uninstall the dexrex.com extension from your PC to prevent future archiving.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
Would be much nicer if you could integrate all those features directly into Y! Messenger…
Comment by K-tutzah — June 24, 2008 #
Um, yea… I’ve been lobbying for archive search feature for quite some time now. It’s long overdue. Stop playing around with smilies and do what needs to be done.
Comment by Odyn — June 24, 2008 #
Google Talk has had this feature integrated with Gmail for quite some time.
Comment by Dustin — June 24, 2008 #
[...] blogul oficial Yahoo! Messenger ne este prezentat acest serviciu pe larg [...]
Pingback by Cum să-ți salvezi convorbirile online | Y!M Lover — June 24, 2008 #
Sarah, thanks taking the time to try out Dexrex! We’re very proud of our little plugin, and I’m glad that you found it useful.
In the past few days, Dexrex has gotten a lot of attention from all over the world. We weren’t completely prepared for the number of new users uploading their conversations — more than 2 million messages so far today — and we’ve taken steps to make the Conversation Importer more robust. Feel free to try it again next week, after we publish an update to our site.
If you or any of your readers would like to drop us a line, you can reach us at http://www.dexrex.com/Contact.php We read every email we get, and always welcome more feedback!
[Disclosure: I am one of the ten amazing people working at Dexrex]
Comment by Cristos Lianides-Chin — June 24, 2008 #
ok this may sound funny but i want to know about the level of privacy and security this plug in has to offer. I know we can’t expect 100% or even 90% privacy and security on any instant massaging but i just want know if ur archives could not be easily hacked by any kiddie hacker out there LOL.
I hope u can give us some feed back about this…
Comment by YM user — June 25, 2008 #
YM user -
I recommend reading their FAQ at https://www.dexrex.com/FAQ.php which has specific questions concerning security. Or you can contact Derex directly at http://www.dexrex.com/Contact.php
Sarah Bacon
Comment by Administrator — June 25, 2008 #
There’s another service that stores Yahoo! IM’s – http://simkl.com . Basicly it does the same thing with one catch, Simkl doesn’t needs any adittional software to download and doesn’t asks for your Yahoo password
… It’s amasing but I just change some settings in Yahoo and it works.
Here’s a video review of Simkl http://simkl.org/2008/02/05/record-your-im-history-chats-virtually-video-review/
Comment by Bridget — July 1, 2008 #
Bridget, it’s true that there’s more than one program that archives instant messages. A lot of users want to save their logs, and it’s good to see that there are companies looking for solutions.
There are a couple of ways that Dexrex is different from Simkl. The biggest is that Dexrex is free, whereas Simkl charges $3 per screen name per month. Also, Simkl requires you to change your proxy settings in all your IM clients, where Dexrex has one easy-to-run extensions package.
You should give Dexrex a try too, and see which one you like best.
[Disclosure: I am one of the ten incredibly good-looking people who work at Dexrex]
Comment by Cristos Lianides-Chin — July 1, 2008 #
Dexrex asks for my IM password, that’s not an option… Free means that you will use my conversations and password to my account that i provide to be able to use Dedrex.
I actually pay only $2 a month @ Simkl (via yearly subscription) with a peace in mind that my IM’s won’t be used by someone who needs them for free…
Comment by Bridget — July 2, 2008 #
Like I said before, it’s up to everyone to decide which one works best for them. I’m glad you found a solution that meets your needs.
Comment by Cristos Lianides-Chin — July 2, 2008 #
Hey Sarah Bacon You can suck my right cock ? i hear my Friends you have so pretty pussy ? i it right ? please show me your white and shaved pussy on a webcam .
my id : one_and_only_sean@yahoo.com
i love your ass sarah :X
Comment by Sean .P — July 12, 2008 #
Dexrex is Great and i have used it for over a year. It found my OLD archives, as I hadnt realized I changed a location and thru the conversation Importer discovered what I thought wre my long lost archives
There is another FREE Program =
It is called IM-HISTORY
http://im-history.com
This has a History Browser and the exact way you have Your Contact list set up is the view you get.
Simkl was mentioned but it is not free it’s like $2 a month
Comment by Karylle — July 21, 2009 #