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This report presents ChatVis as a 2,800 LOC tool for visualizing activities in instant messaging conversations. The tool visualizes at four different levels, starting from the conversation level down to the message level, the word level and finally the character level. The tool provides means to visualize the typing speed and rhythms of an arbitrary number of conversers. Additionally, it attempts to visualize intangible characteristic of a typed message such as hesitance (uncertainty) and emphasis. ChatVis allows for mouse as well as keyboard interactions to give the user a variety of filtering and zooming options. The system state is always saved allowing for animation through temporal aspects of the conversation. Moreover, the conversation can be persisted to XML and loaded back on demand for comparison purposes amongst different people.