How do you set up Gmail chat?

Options for archiving/exporting Gmail chat statuses or Gmail-integrated notetaking?

• Am I overlooking any options for archiving/exporting Gmail chat statuses? Alternatively, are there any notetaking apps that are REALLY REALLY REALLY well-integrated with Gmail? I have a bad habit of using my Gmail chat status for frequent/constant notes to myself. It works quite well in that I almost always have Gmail open. Archiving or getting the notes out is a problem, though. I can push to Google Buzz or FriendFeed (and then to RSS/Twitter) but there's often a delay or things get mysteriously dropped. I could maybe use "Tasks" but that's an extra copy/paste plus multiple clicks depending on its character limit. If this isn't possible, then my next best hope would be a place to enter text that would be constantly visible in Gmail but also exportable from Gmail. I know I'm being ridiculously lazy/picky, and I'm probably the only person in the world who uses status updates like this, but if anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

• Answer:

  I would just leave the tasks pane open, and then when you don't need the note anymore, check it and then use the Clear Completed Tasks option from the menu. Or what I do is to keep a draft e-mail with the bigger things in it, and keep that open in a popped out GMail window.