timmyjohnboy.com

A better way to IM – A Review of Trillian Astra

A Guest Post by Brett Barner of GodlySheep.com and @Godlysheep about Trillian Astra.

Instant Messaging (IM) clients are a dime-a-dozen nowadays. Though IMing seems so ’90s, it is still useful today. The big issue with IM clients is that unless you and all of your friends get together and decide universally what IM service you all want to use, you’re stuck having 4 different accounts. That, and you’re still using the screen name you came up with in high school (CreedFan4Eva) because you don’t want to take the time and effort to create and tell your friends of your new, more adult, screen name. This isn’t a problem for all your high school chums, but if you meet someone new, you cringe giving it out. That’s where Trillian Astra steps in, and then organizes even more.

Instant Messaging:

The founding function of Trillian Astra is its IM feature. It is it’s own IM network, but also supports other IM networks in case you venture away from just AIM. Here’s a list of the IM networks Trillian supports in addition to it’s own network: AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MySpace IM, Windows Live, and Yahoo!. Not only can you have multiple clients open at once, you can also have multiple screen names under the same client open at the same time. This comes in handy if you have different screen names for different reasons. (i.e. personal & professional). You can also set all your status as “Away”, “Invisible”, “Offline”, or “Online” with the click of one button. (or you can set them individually)

Trillian also offers video/audio support and file transfers. It supports Skype, which you can add as one of your services as well. You can use Skype as an IM service as well as a video and audio client. The downside of using Skype with Trillian is the amount of system resources it requires to run Skype alongside of Trillian. Trillian manages Skype, but if you’re concerned about processor speeds, Skype eats up a lot of your RAM, even when it’s just sitting there.

Email:

If you set up an AIM, Google Talk, Windows Live, or Yahoo! in Trillian, you will get the option of setting up the email notifier that is associated with those accounts. If you have another kind of email service, POP3 and IMAP. A small notification window will pop up in the bottom, right-hand corner of your screen to notify you of your incoming messages. Click on the link, and Trillian will whisk you away to the new message through your browser.

Social Networks:

If you’re hip to Facebook or Twitter, Trillian Astra’s got you covered. With Facebook, Trillian will notify you of people’s status changes, and profile updates. If you or a friend’s wall has been written on, it’ll let you know. If you receive a Facebook email, it’ll notify you of that as well. My favorite part of Trillian’s Facebook tool is that it also notifies you of your friend’s birthdays. This has helped me out since Facebook moved the birthday portion down on its homepage.

Trillian’s Twitter tool gives you up to you news feed of who you are following, direct messages, and you can tweet directly from the contact list with TinyURL support. Trillian also supports multiple Twitter accounts.

Trillian is typically running in my system tray and helps keep me up to date with it’s great, OS X Growlish, notifications. You can even have multiple accounts with Trillian. For example, my wife and I have our own accounts with saved personal settings. There are a lot more other features as well, with widgets and different skin settings.

Trillian Astra is free with the option of a pro version. Trillian is only available for Windows right now, but is close in development for Mac and iPhone users. There is also a web version that doesn’t require a download.

Screenshots:

Visit: Trillian.im