After years of private testing, Trillian launched a public beta of its updated multi-protocol chat client earlier this summer. This week, the company took off the beta label, and Trillian Astra replaces the company's older chat client.

Trillian Astra lets users chat with contacts on a number of services, including AOL Intant Messenger, Windows live Mesenger, Google Talk, ICQ, and Yahoo! Messenger.

It also lets you update your Facebook and Twitter status messages, which makes Trillian Astra a direct competitor to Digsby. So if you were annoyed with Digsby's heavy-handed revenue generating techniques, you might want to take a look at Trillian Astra. To Digsby's credit, the company did roll out an update that makes the "Support Digsby" section easier to spot and configure, along with a link to a Wiki entry explaining how the Digsby Research Module works.

Trillian Astra is available as a free download for Windows. Mac and iPhone versions are in the works. There's also a web client, which pits Trillian Astra against web-based chat service Meebo.

[via CNET]

VoxOx is a chat, social networking, and VoIP communications tool for Windows and Mac. When you sign up for a beta account, you're assigned a phone number which people can dial from any phone to reach you. You can also make free calls to other VoxOx users or cheap calls to phone numbers.

We first looked at VoxOx when the service launched in November. This month, the VoxOx team released version 2, which is more stable and which has a handful of new features including:

• A digital "personal assistant" that screens calls, sends them to voicemail, or routes them to your phone depending on your preferences
• Send and receive texts from your VoxOx number
• Skype IM integration (as well as Facebook and MySpace)

VoxOx 2 also loads faster and uses less memory than the initial release.

We all went ga-ga over Google Wave when it was announced back at Google's I/O conference in May, but except for a very fortunate few, we really don't know what it will be like to use. Today online productivity suite developer ZenBe released a new product called Shareflow, which has a number of similarities to Google Wave.

Shareflow is a collaboration tool that ZenBe says is not email, IM, social networking, or instant messaging, but has elements of all of them. Sound familiar? The idea is that you can organize conversations around topics by creating "flows" and inviting people to collaborate on them. This maps directly to Google's concept of creating "waves" and inviting people to them.

Obviously Shareflow and Wave are not identical, and as with anything their respective implementations will have many differences. Beyond implementation differences, there are three fundamental differences between Shareflow and Wave that are worth noting:

1. Wave will be a free and predominantly open-source product, while Shareflow is a closed-source commercial product (albeit with a free account as one of the various plan levels)
2. Wave has the strength of Google behind it
3. You can't use Wave today, but you can use Shareflow

You can sign up for a free account, or use the promo code FREE30 to get 30 days free of either their Basic, Plus, or Premium plan.

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]

Meebo is a web-based instant messaging app. Users can sign into AOL, Windows Live, Google, Yahoo! and other instant messaging services from any web browser without downloading and installing any software. But today Meebo launched something new: A desktop notifier.

Notice I didn't say desktop client. The new tool doesn't let you run Meebo outside of a web browser. What it does is sign you into your IM services and send you notifications when your contacts log on or off, or send you a message. It does this whether you have Meebo open in a browser window or not. You can also use the notifier to quickly load the Meebo.com web site so you can reply to messages, check your buddy list, or perform other actions.

A Mac version is in the works, but right now the Meebo notifier is only available for Windows.

[via Profy]

AIM Blast is a new AOL Instant Messenger feature that makes me feel old, because I just realized that it's been a decade since I first wondered why there was no way to IM multiple buddies without opening a chatroom. Well, it's finally here, and it works pretty well. You can't make a Blast Group from within AIM, but if you go to blast.aim.com, you can set up and edit a group from there. Blast seems to work with third-party AIM clients, although AOL says that Meebo may have some problems with it.

The Blast Group will then show up on your buddy list, and any IM you send to it will go to everyone in the group. The group acts like a normal AIM account, it just puts people's individual screennames in front of their messages, so you know who's talking. When you invite people (using your group admin page), they'll get a message in AIM asking them to accept or decline. Once they're in, they can IM the group, unless you make it admin-only. That makes your group more like a notification system than a chat, but that may work better for some people.

On Sunday, Business Week published an article stating "It's the end of instant messaging as we know it." In columnist Douglas MacMillan's mind, integrated chat features on sites like Facebook and GMail have signed the death warrant.

Oh really? That's kind of interesting, because there's a lot of evidence that IM is alive and kicking.

Taking a quick look at some stats on Download.com, I notice that these apps still seem to be pretty damn popular. Pidgin has more than half a million downloads to date. Since Trillian was added to the site, it's been downloaded almost 37 million times.

The latest release of Live Messenger 14 is well over 400,000 in just two months - and these numbers don't take into account the numerous other mirrors for these (and numerous other IM) apps.

KonoLive is launching a new "instant collaboration" service at DEMO this week. The company's application looks a lot like an instant messaging client built on Adobe AIR. But while most IM clients allow you to do a few things besides chatting (like sharing files, images, and even video), KonoLive takes things to a whole new level.

Users will be able to share Office documents, PDF files, and digital media files with contacts without opening a web browser. Users can also comment on media, and keep track of various versions of a document.

The application is geared more toward business users than casual computer users. Most folks don't really need yet another IM client littering their desktop. But if you're looking for a way to collaborate with a team of people scattered across the globe, or even a typical office space KonoLive looks like an interesting option. The service is expected to launch in private beta on Wednesday.

[via Mashable]

Need to communicate with a colleague, client, or eBay seller in China, but don't speak Chinese? SpeakLike wants to help. The service, which launches in private beta this week provides real-time chat translation services.

SpeakLike works by using a combination of machine and human translation. As you send a message, a machine will automatically translate it to another language, while a human translator looks things over to make sure the translation is accurate.

SpeakLike plans to charge by the message. So rather than paying by the word or minute as you would with most translation services, you'll pay $.10 per message. It's not clear if there's a word limit on messages, but we're going to assume you can't write a 10 paragraph message and then hit send.

At launch, SpeakLike supports English, Spanish, and Simplified Chinese. Human translators will only be available during limited hours while the service is in beta. But eventually the goal is to offer 24/7 translation services.

In order to user SpeakLike you'll need to install the company's chat client. The service is not compatible with AIM, MSN Messenger, or any other service. And there's currently no option to save transcripts of your chat. But you'd be amazed what a little copying and pasting can do to remedy that situation.

Yahoo! appears to be working on a new social networking/chat service. MyM is in private beta at the moment, so we can't tell you much about it, but Silicon Valley gossip rag Valleywag reports that the service could be some sort of web-based instant messenger that will tie in with other social sites including Facebook, Friendster, MySpace, LiveJournal, and competing IM services including AIM, MSN Messenger, and Meebo.

We'd say the whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense, except we don't really know enough about the service to condemn it yet. When you sign up for email notification of future myM news, you're asked what social networks and chat clients you use. While Valleywag surmises that this means myM will tie in with those services, it's also possible that Yahoo! just wants to know how you use the internet.

Still, as long as we're in the realm of speculation here, we're going to make a wild guess that myM will be a Yahoo! branded web-based instant messaging widget that you'll be able to add to various social networking sites or your personal blog. But until someone sends us an invite, we'll never really know. Hint hint.

Multi-protocol instant messaging client Pidgin has hit version 2.2. And when they say multi-protocol, they mean it. Pidgin supports AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, MySpaceIM, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo!, and Zephyr.

In other words, there's a good chance this open-source program is the only instant messaging client you'll ever need to install on your Windows or Linux PC. There are a bunch of updates since the last release. One of our favorites is the return of optional protocol icons which make it easy to tell which of your friends are using MSN Messenger, and which are using AIM (and so on). Here are some of the other changes:

• Yahoo! Chat is fixed
• AIM file transfer issues fixed
• Properly restore idle status time for AIM and ICQ accounts that reconnect after being disconnected
• Remember "enable sounds" setting for a conversation

If you've got friends and family using 17 different instant messaging applications, Pidgin is a great way to keep in touch with everyone without installing 17 different programs. And the best thing is when you turn it off, they all go away. You know, unless they e-mail, call, or stop by your house for a visit.
[via Digg]