I ask you to suggest any Jabber client, which support Gtalk XEP-136 extension. This extension allows you to access the latest messages stored on the server. For example, I talk to someone through Gtalk on my phone, then open Jabber client on my computer and can see the last N (default 10) messages in the conversation.
I know only one application with this feature, and it is Google Talk, but it have not a native version for Ubuntu/Linux.