Trillian has launched a public beta of Trillian Astra, the company's updated chat client for AOL, Yahoo!, Windows Live, Google, and other instant messaging service. Trillian Astra also lets you update your status on Facebok and Twitter, something earlier versions of the IM client couldn't do.

The application has been in private testing for what seems like forever, but a few months ago the company started giving out beta invitations like there was no tomorrow. So removing the "private" label was probably just a formality.

Trillian Astra is available for Windows 200, XP, Vista, or 7. The company is working on Mac, iPhone, and web clients, but those aren't available to the public yet. You can sign up to be notified when those versions are available at the download page. Or you could just use Pidgin or Adium.

[via CNet]

Remember the first time you realized that not all of your friends used the same instant messaging service? If you were on AIM and they were using MSN messenger you either had to sign up for a new service and run two desktop applications or shoot them frequent emails. And then came Trillian, one of the first programs to let users interact with contacts on multiple IM networks from a single application.

Over the years, other applications joined the party, including Pidgin, Miranda, and Digsby. And Trillian sort of fell out of the limelight. Two and a half years ago the company began alpha testing its next generation instant messenger called Trillian Astra. But it's been locked away behind an invite-only wall ever since.

And this week Lifehacker noted that pretty much anyone who signs up for a beta invite is being sent one almost immediately. That means two things. First, if you want to check out Trillian Astra, you can likely do it now. Second, a public release is probably coming soon. I could be wrong on the latter point, but I don't think so.

The latest version of Trillian Astra adds support for social networking services including Facebook and Twitter as well as instant messaging services, which means it could give Digsby a run for its money. Right now only a Windows version of the chat client is available, but OS X and iPhone versions are in the works as well. If you sign up for a beta invite, you may get a notice one of these days letting you know that those versions are available for download.

I've blogged about it before, and I'll blog about it again.

Back when I was just a wee lad of the Internet, I found a most wonderful concept: instant messaging! At the time, I thought MSN Messenger was the coolest thing since the automatic bread slicer. Of course, my best friend preferred Yahoo! Messenger, and the majority of everyone else I knew would use nothing but AOL Instant Messenger. So, I had two choices: have three relatively bloated instant messaging running simultaneously on my computer, or lose electronic touch with the rest of the world. That is, until I found Trillian.

Trillian, like Digsby or Adium, aggregates multiple different instant messaging services into one relatively light-weight application. The Basic (free) version supports AIM, ICQ, Windows Live, and Yahoo! service as well as IRC chat. The Pro version throws in support for Jabber (Google Talk and soon Facebook), Novell GroupWise, and Bonjour (formerly Rendezvous). Also, if you shell out the $25 for the Pro version, you'll get video chat support for the networks that support it.

Been so busy trying to think of world records that aren't in the Guinness Book yet that you haven't had time to read about this week's software news? Don't worry, we've got you covered. Here are some of our favorite stories from the past week:

• Whipping your website into shape
  You run a small business. And you have a small website. And no offense, but it kind of looks like you let your 6 year old design it. We've collected some of our favorite tips for making your web site a thing of beauty. Oh yeah, and it'll be far easier for people to find what they're looking for too.
• Do you know what your hard drive has been up to?
  CrystalDiskInfo is a handy little Windows utility that spits out all sorts of information about your hard drive state, including its temperature, the number of power cycles, and even how many hours you've been running the drive. So if you run this free application every now and again and save the data, when your hard drive inevitably fails, at least you'll have an idea why.
• Mozilla breaks non-existent world record, nobody cares
  Look, we hear what you're saying. Mozilla scored a world record for the largest number of downloads in a 24 hour period when the company launched Firefox 3. That's be pretty awesome, except nobody had ever bothered to compete in this category before. So it's not exactly shocking that Mozilla holds the record now, is it? And no, we have no plans to fire Drew Olanoff for writing this post which has been the subject of much debate.
• Windows XP goes by bye
  This week saw the retirement of Windows XP. Kind of. Microsoft will no longer let end users pick up a standalone license. But you can still get a copy of the venerable operating system if you really want it. Some of them are even legal!
• Trillian turns 8, no astra beta birthday gift quite yet
  Multi-protocol chat client Trillian turned 8 years old this week. The program has been downloaded over 35 million times so far. And while we were crossing our fingers hoping that the new version, called Trillian Astra, might poke its head out for the anniversary, the upcoming version of Trillian is still in private alpha.
• Windows Steady State bulletproofs your system
  Ever wish you could throw caution to the wind and click on obviously dangerous links, download files that are likely to contain trojans, and otherwise muck up your system without actually mucking up your system? Windows Steady State creates a large cache file that essentially lets you save all of your activity in a temporary location. When you reboot your system, anything you did while running Steady State should be removed.

Your co-workers use MSN Messenger, your family is partial to AOL Instant Messenger, and your friends use Google Talk. There are plenty of utilities that let you keep in touch with all of your contacts regardless of the IM platform they're using. But while we love Digsby, Trillian, Pidgin, and Adium most of the time, there are a few features missing from those apps:

• Support for voice and video chats
• The ability to invite friends from different IM networks into a single chat room

And that's where Instan-T comes in. This multi-protocol chat client for Windows supports AOL, Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Messengers. It also supports voice and video chat across each network, although we've found that feature to be a bit finnicky. When we tested out a voice chat, we were able to the person speaking on the other end, but she couldn't hear us. We'll chalk that up to a hardware problem.

Probably the most interesting thing about Instan-T is that it lets you set up a chat room that you can invite contacts from any service to participate in. Just click on a contact name and select multi-person chat. They'll receive an invitation with a URL to click on that will open up a Flash-based chat room, which also features voice and video support.

We'll be honest. The Instan-T interface is a little cluttered and confusing when compared with other multi-protocol chat clients. But the application definitely shows promise. If you want to try the service without downloading and installing anything, you Instan-T also has a Meebo-like web based instant messenger. The web client supports Internet Explorer and Firefox, which means you should be able to access the service whether you're using Windows, Linux or OS X.

[via TechnoBuzz]

Facebook is adding new privacy controls today which will give you more control over your interactions with people in your friend lists. For example, you can share photo albums or applications with your professional contacts while hiding away the good stuff for closer friends.

The company also confirmed plans to launch a web-based instant messenger service that will let you communicate with other Facebook members in real-time. TechCrunch has the video you can see above showing how Facebook Chat could work. But the application is still in development and there could be some changes before it's officially launched in a few weeks.

As IM clients go, Facebook Chat doesn't look that impressive. You'll only be able to communicate with other Facebook users, not AIM, MSN, and Yahoo! Messenger users. But Jabber support could be added in the future, which would let you access Facebook Chat with third party software like Trillian, Pidgin, or Adium.

Simkl is a web service that saves your instant message history to its servers so that you can access that searchable history from any computer with Internet access. You'll need a Simkl account and some money (1 month of archiving is $2.99 and one year is $24.99). You'll also have to change a setting in your IM client to use Simkl as a proxy (so that it can save your messages).

If the thought of a third party (besides the actual service provider) archiving your instant messages doesn't bother you, you can try out the service for a week for free. The history viewer is web-based, and you can do full-text searches on your IM history.

Simkl supports most of the popular IM clients including Yahoo, MSN, AIM, Pidgin, iChat, ICQ, Trillian, and Adium. Keep in mind that many of these IM clients like Pidgin and Trillian can log your chats individually, but if you use multiple computers with different IM clients, Simkl can unify your IM logging.

You've got friends using AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, and Google's instant messenger clients. You could install four different applications, or you could use a multi-protocol chat client like Pidgin, Miranda, or Trillian.

For mac users, the undisputed champion of multi-chat clients is Adium. Like all things Mac, the program has a cult-following and probably for good reason. It's a robust chat application that works with more than a dozen different chat protocols.

But it's about to get some competition. Cerulean Studios, the company behind Trillian is working on a Mac version of their popular IM client. The Mac version is still in the early alpha testing phase and doesn't have all the features you can find on its Windows cousin. In other words, while you can test it out today, you probably won't feel any urge to stop using Adium. Eventually the developers plan to add features and full-fledged multi-chat client for OS X.

In order to sign up for the Alpha you'll need to sign up for an account using the Windows version of Trillian Astra.

[via tuaw]

Over at the Cerulean Studios blog they've put up a form you can fill out to get your name on the list for alpha-testing the new Trillian Astra. Those who have paid for Trillian Pro or have done so in the past will get preferential treatment, according to Cerulean's Scott Werndorfer's previous post, but will be preceded by people who "Emailed [him] long ago" and followed by those who write a "snazzy description" of themselves and why they should be a tester. Werndorfer also says that Trillian Astra will eventually be available to the general public, so if you don't get in on this round, don't dismay.

In case you're not up on the latest Trillian Astra, a.k.a. Trillian 4, news, you should check out the Sneak Preview as well as our recent interview with Scott Werndorfer.

At long last, Cerulean Studios has released some more information on Trillian Astra, the long-awaited next version of its popular multi-protocol instant messaging client. Apart from a sparse few screenshots, until now we've seen very little of Astra. Now Cerulean has put up a sneak preview site that pimps some of the features we can expect in the successor to Trillian 3.1. Here's a quick summary of what's new:

Performance:
Astra improves on start-up time, redrawing time (i.e. how quickly skinned elements appear and change), and memory usage. Memory leaks have also been plugged and Cerulean is building some lightweight skins with efficient memory usage in mind.

Interoperability:
Brand new in Astra is support for MySpace IM. They've also created a separate Google Talk component (distinct from the Jabber plugin) and split the AIM and ICQ components apart. Also coming is improved file transfer compatibility, a more informative file transfer dialog, and a cool feature that zips folders on the fly for sending a bunch of files at once, and they've added support for custom MSN status messages. Under the hood, they've created an "IMCore" library that aims to make IM plugins stabler and easier to develop.

Although I've never found instant messaging on my Pocket PC to be a particularly enjoyable experience, there are times where it can be pretty convenient. I'm thinking of those quick moments when you want to get a message to someone quickly - you're not looking to initiate a conversation, but just pass along some information in a quick manner.

I live in Canada, where for some reason MSN Messenger, oops, I mean Windows Live Messenger (that's what it's called this week, right?) seems to be the standard IM platform. But I have contacts on many other platforms as well: my old-school contacts are on ICQ, my co-bloggers here at Download Squad are on AOL IM, some other Weblogs Inc. people are on Yahoo! Messenger, and my geekiest friends are on Google Talk. That's 5 distinct messaging platforms I need to run at any given time. On my PC there are a few options, like the old standby Trillian, or my personal small and quick favorite, Miranda IM. But on Pocket PCs you're sort of stuck with MSN Messenger.

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this... I've discovered imov, a "universal mobile messenger" for Pocket PCs. imov supports Google Talk, AOL IM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and Jabber instant messaging protocols in one seamless user interface. The free version is ad-supported, but there is also an ad-free Enterprise version that adds some useful features like the ability to hide offline contacts and support for Smartphone Pocket PCs. Although I'm still not a big fan of IM using my Pocket PC, err, I mean Windows Mobile device, at least now when I do need to do it I can reach all of my contacts regardless of what IM platform they choose to use.

I stumbled across a cool feature in Trillian Pro today completely by accident. I was trying to rearrange some contacts when I accidentally dragged one of them outside of my buddy list, which created a second, mini-buddy-list. I'm sure this isn't new to everybody, but it's new to me, and I thought it was cool. Just click and drag any contact, meta-contact, or contact group off of your buddy list and drop it elsewhere on your desktop, and now those contacts will be available in a little collapsible, dockable list of their own. I realize that half the reason for using Trillian is to get rid of multiple buddy lists, but this seems handy for keeping certain contacts available while you've got the rest of the buddy list hidden away. I'm not sure if the free version of Trillian has this feature--can anybody confirm?

While many have been satisfied with Portable Gaim for their take-it-with-you IM needs, some people are stuck on Trillian (and not without reason). What are those people to do if they want to be able to take a complete Trillian install with them on a USB drive? Trillian Anywhere poses a solution. It's not a portable version of Trillian you download, but rather an "online wizard" that will guide you through the steps of creating and modifying a Trillian install that will play nice on portable storage. There are separate wizards for each version of Trillian, but the process basically goes like this: Install Trillian in a temporary directory, install your skin, plugins, and copy over your profile, then edit its INI files so that Trillian behaves the way you want it. This seems like a good opportunity for a developer to automate the process, but there's only six steps involved and it's straightforward enough even for novices.

Ars Technica is reporting that tomorrow Google will be announcing a new video service that will "allow users to buy video content for pre-determined prices," and they're also planning to announce partnerships with CBS and the NBA. Ars has lots of juicy speculation, including whether they'll be offering downloads or only streaming video, if they'll use Flash video as Google Video currently does, and if this means we'll finally see the long-rumored Google Wallet. Google also plans to announce Google Pack, a software bundle which, says Ars, will include the obvious Google software like Desktop Search, Picasa, Google Earth, Google Talk, and more, but also some third party tools including "Google-tweaked" versions of Firefox, Acrobat Reader, Symantec anti-virus software, the malware remover Ad-Aware, multi-network IM client Trillian, and RealPlayer. I agree with Ars: Those last two choices are very curious indeed.