Skip to Content

Submit your nominations for the Luxist Awards' Best in Decor
AOL Tech

Filed under: Windows, Commercial, Freeware, Beta

Trillian turns 8, no Astra beta birthday gift quite yet

We all love applications that take lots of little things and turn them into one big thing. When this concept is applied to instant messaging clients, one program should jump to everyone's mind: Trillian. Ever since its first multi-protocol release in 2000, many Windows users that want all the IM without all the hassle have chosen Trillian as their weapon of choice for tackling their instant messaging needs.

This week marks the eighth anniversary of Trillian's first release. Since then, Cerulean Studios has had over 35 million downloads, and has become one of the (if not the single) most popular instant messaging clients for Windows. Currently, there are two versions of Trillian offered. Trillian Basic, the free version, offers support for AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and IRC chat. Audio chat is available for all of the protocols that support it.

Cerulean Studios also offers Trillian Pro for $25 dollars; the beefed-up version adds support for more protocols like Bonjour, Novell GroupWise, and Jabber, along with support for video chat and third-party plugins for things like mail, weather, and news feeds. Trillian Pro can also combine your contacts who have multiple IM services into "metacontacts," which help you manage your contact list.

Currently in the works is version 4 of Trillian, called Trillian Astra. Astra boasts incredible new features, including its own IM service that helps to integrate the other IM connections, a web interface and an iPhone interface to allow you to chat on all of your protocols anywhere, and a much more streamlined user interface that supports dozens of colors and styles out-of-the-box. Currently, Trillian Astra is in a private alpha phase. However, their development team has stated that there will be a public beta at some point in the future.

Celebrate Trillian's 8th birthday by checking it out if you're looking for a solution to your all your IM needs.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Featured Time Waster

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures
Microsoft Security Essentials
Chromium Pre-Alpha on CrunchBang Linux
Safari 4 Beta
10 Firefox themes that don't suck
IE8 RC1
Download Squad at the Crunchies After-Party
Download Squad at the Crunchies
WordPress 2.7
Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals
Windows 7 Hands On
Comodo Internet Security
Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store
Android First-look: Twitroid
Google Reader Android
Android Hands-On
Twine 1.0
Photoshop Express Beta
Mozilla Birthday Cake
Palm stuff
Adobe Lightroom 1.1

 


Follow us on Twitter!

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

More Tech Coverage

AOL Radio