I have a problem. I do a lot of collaborative work at university, and the main method of communication (and most convenient) for students use is Facebook. I would love to integrate Facebook messages with Ubuntu.
I know this is almost possible with Pidgin, but this is only really for chat, it doesn't allow me to be offline or see offline messages. It also constantly tells me people are going on and offline as I basically have every person I've ever met on there, and most of they check Facebook on an hourly basis.
I've seen android apps which have this functionality, so there must be an API for it. Is there an Ubuntu app which handles this nicely?
Most of these apps are using XMPP for the service, this means that they have to be online to check for new messages, XMPP supports invisible state. Default chat client for ubuntu is empath - use that instead of Pidgin, in empathy you can set your state to invisible and it wont inform you when users go online. (You can also change that in pidgin settings window.)