Trillian Astra
Don’t you find having to use multiple instant messenger services for all your different friends and contacts a real pain in the bottom, well I do, I have contacts on 3 different messenger services and Facebook which of course has its own chat / messenger service.
I have in the past gathered quite a few contacts on Windows Live Messenger, a few more on Yahoo Messenger and I even have a couple on AOL Instant Messenger, add to these all my lovely friends on Facebook and it all becomes a bit unworkable. I had more or less decided to single out only one messenger service to use along with Facebook, I chose Windows Live Messenger, I’m not sure why I just did.
But I remember quite a long time ago I used to use a bit of software called “Trillian”, this was like a shell, a front end if you like, which linked together my different messengers in one window, it worked ok, perhaps a little clunky at times but I remembered it being very useful. So I did a little search and lo and behold, Trillian still exists but with a whole new look and feel, a revamped interface, it looks all modern and stuff, it even accepts services such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace etc.
So in this modern, highly connected age we have “Trillian Astra”, this sleek new piece of software is a messenger client on which you can use all your different services under one roof, it works as standalone on your PC (my choice), on a web browser anywhere and on the IPhone (for anyone lucky enough to own one), it sounds like the answer to my problems so I have downloaded it to my laptop and decided to give it a try out, no I’m not lucky enough to own an IPhone.
Following download and installation, all very easy as it should be, I was asked to enter the log on details for each of the services I use, it also set up an identity and a little profile for Trillian Astra as well, there was nothing in the least bit difficult. I now discovered I had a brand new shiny messenger gadget sat on my desktop. On the contacts window were listed all my contacts from Windows Live, Yahoo and AOL, my Facebook friends did not appear on the offline list originally but as each one comes online they appear as such and when they go offline they are then added to the normal offline contact list and remain visible from then on, it also shows e-mail updates for any of the services which have it and updates by my Facebook contacts.
I can appear online, invisible, away, in fact any of the usual statuses either for all the services or individually. It is also completely skinable although I quite like the default skin myself, there is a well featured preferences editor so you can set it up more or less as you like. Another quite clever thing, well I think its clever, is the use of MetaContacts, if you have a friend who is a contact on yahoo, AOL and Windows live for instance you could leave them all showing separately, or alternatively you could lump them all together under one contact name of your choice, this is called a MetaContact and can tidy your contact list up a bit if its getting over busy.
I have already been involved in instant messaging on it with a contact on one of the main messaging services and found it easy and intuitive to use, its all pretty seamless, whichever service my friend is using it seems to me to be as if we are both using Trillian, meanwhile the other person just see’s more or less what they normally do with their own messenger. I was also chatting to a friend who was at the time on Facebook and while I saw a Trillian style chat window he was just seeing the usual Facebook chat window. The clunkiness I remember from the old version seems to have gone, so far this feels slick and smooth and I’m enjoying using it, its getting a big thumbs up from me and I see no reason at the moment for me to use anything else.
Of course everything I have said here applies to the standalone downloadable version which runs on your own PC, I haven’t tried the web browser based version and I don’t have an IPhone.
Of the main messenger services, Windows Live Messenger is still my favourite but now it doesn’t matter so much because with minimal effort I can see them all together by opening only one piece of software, coolio, I think I’ll be carrying on using Trillian Astra and therefore using all my messengers at once, well unless something bad regarding it rears its ugly head, if that happens I’ll let you know.
For anyone interested these are my 3 messenger ID’s,
Windows Live Messenger = kvnwheeler2509@hotmail.com
Yahoo Messenger = kvnwheeler@btopenworld.com
AOL Instant Messenger = kvnwheeler
and
My Facebook is here = http://www.facebook.com/thehappysnapper
If you’re interested in connecting on any of these then please be my guest, if we already know each other in some way or if we have something in common, a hobby, past time or life experience perhaps, then I will probably accept, if we don’t know each other and your just looking to amass meaningless contacts or we have nothing at all in common then I may not accept, still, if your interested then give it a try and we’ll see.
