It’s been a while since I wrote about a web service or product, so I thought I’d take a moment to put something out there about Trillian Astra. Astra is the latest incarnation of a multi-protocol instant messenger (IM) client from Cerulean Studios. I started using the original Trillian client several years ago when I got tired of managing multiple IM clients to connect with AIM, Y! Messenger, MSN Messenger (now Live Messenger) and private IRC chat rooms. I discovered Trillian 3.1 and was immediately smitten by its ability to work with all these services while consuming as much computing resource as just a single client. I was so impressed that I eventually paid to upgrade to the Trillian Pro version. While there were a few additional features in Pro, I can’t remember what they were (integration with Google Talk?). I upgraded to Pro because Cerulean Studios earned their $25 (and then some) for creating such a great product.
Fast forward to the fall of 2007 when Trillian began Alpha testing for its new Astra platform. I immediately signed up to help test and I haven’t looked back. While Astra has added additional plug-ins for newer social network services such as Facebook and Twitter (you can see FB status updates and Tweets as they are generated by your friends), the big feature is a browser-based client in addition to the locally installed client. While most of the services already offer this to their users, it was a big advancement for Cerulean Studios to offer such a “works wherever you can get an Internet connection” type solution. The browser client looks very much like the local client and their servers hold copies of your connections, buddy lists and so forth so you can IM on the go, even if you’re on another person’s PC. Very handy.
I highly recommend Trillian and if you use more than one IM service, give it a shot as I think it’s the best solution amongst its group of competitors.
