Trillian Astra is an instant messaging application with a twist: it allows you to use multiple accounts for various IM services. In other words, it has the power to gather all your friends from several messengers in a single interface.
This software imports all the contacts of your selected instant messaging platform (Windows Live Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, Skype), but it can also directly access social networks (Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, LinkedIn).
In addition, Trillian has borrowed most of the important features from other messengers that you like so much, and added new ones. You can open a new window and chat, or send a quick message to a friend who has just signed in.
Friends can be sorted in the list in various ways: alphabetically, by conversation history size, etc. There are several actions that can be performed during a conversation: you can insert a screen capture (by clicking and dragging the mouse), flag text as important (i.e. yellow text with red highlights), or change font to code style (which is especially useful if you're trying to explain a programming language to someone).
There are tons of emoticons you can play with (smiley faces, objects and symbols), and some of them are compatible with both Yahoo and MSN Messenger. The chat history is better organized than in typical instant messengers, because here you can actually select a date from the calendar to access a conversation, as well as view any images exchanged between you and your friends. What’s more, the chat history can be synced between your computer and your smart phone, so it’s at your disposal everywhere you go.
In conclusion, Trillian Astra is worth your while if you need an IM application that can deal with multiple accounts at a time. The streamlined interface, together with the intuitive feel you get when you get acquainted with it makes it a reliable choice.
What's New in This Release:
Group chat improvements:
· Save chats to your contact list, automatically join selected chats, stay in chat rooms even when closing the window, edit topics directly from the chat window, and much more!
Trillian group chats:
· In addition to beefing up group chats across the board, we’re also unveiling Trillian group chats in 5.3! Right now you’ll need to be on the Windows client to take advantage of group chats but we’ll be rolling support out for other devices soon. Trillian group chats are a great way to keep a team connected – they’re persistent and cloud-history backed, ensuring you can catch up on conversation that happened while you weren’t around.
In-game chat:
· Our new in-game plugin exposes an overlay that works inside of full screen games to keep you chatting while you play! In-game chat supports tabbed chatting, alerts, and a cool “unread badge” that sticks around even when the overlay isn’t visible so you always know how many unread messages await you. You can enabl...
Users are advised to pay attention while installing this ad-supported application:
· Offers to download or install software or components (Ask Toolbar, Xobni) that the program does not require to fully function
· Attempts to change the default search engine for web browsers installed on the system
· Displays ad banners or other types of advertising material during its runtime