Trillian History
Trillian is an instant messenger client revealed to the public in 2000; while it did not incorporate file sharing until one year later, it still competed heavily with messaging giants such as Yahoo!, AIM and Windows Live Messenger. Highly regarded as the replacement of other clients, Trillian allowed users to connect to friends regardless of the client they used. The official website of Trillian can be found here.
Brief History
In the beginning, there were only giants -- these were the most downloaded instant messaging clients available at the time; however, Trillian came along and offered people the ability to access multiple networks without the need to download their services.
Because of this, many existing clients denied access from Trillian, especially AOL who was the leading messenger service at the time. Over time, this became less of a problem and Trillian was allowed to connect with existing messengers, securing its place in the instant messaging market.
Released on July 1, 2000, the first version of Trillian was released as a freeware IRC program. In 2002, the first commercial version of the program, Trillian Pro 1.0, was released. The name Trillian was derived from a character featured in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". The official Trillian website went as far as to make reference to the book's author Douglas Adams. Today, Trillian still has both the free and premium version available for download.
Trillian Astra (4.0) was released in August 2009, along with the Astra network. In November 2009, Trillian for Iphone was released. This is the first version of Trillian made for a mobile application. The latest updates for Trillian Astra, Windows Beta version 5.0.0.30, was made available for release on March 1, 2011. Trillian has also released versions for the Blackberry, Android, and Web.
Connections
Trillian connects to multiple instant messaging services such as Yahoo!, Windows Live, AIM, Bonjour, ICQ and IRC Novell GroupWise. Included in the list are popular social media websites including Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Users can send and receive messages just as they would with their previous messenger, and email notifications and other alerts are provided as well.
The different connections available in Trillian are given specific colors; this is what identifies the client you are currently connected to. A few examples include:
- Blue: Windows Live Messenger
- Amber: AOL Instant Messenger
- Teal and Amber: Google Talk
- Red: Yahoo! Messenger
- Teal: Skype
It should be noted that Skype can only work with Trillian if it is installed and running on the same machine. The plugin, SkyLlian, must be added to Trillian in order for the connection to work correctly.
Features
Metacontact
This feature removes duplicates in the contact list; this also allows users to group multiple contacts together, as well as group multiple contact entries for one particular contact.
Skins
Everyone loves customization, and Trillian allows users to take advantage of its skinning engine by downloading skins from an offsite gallery.
Smileys
Emoticons are an easy way to show someone how happy or sad you are; thankfully, Trillian comes preloaded with more smileys than most instant messengers. Some smileys have additional sound clips added that can be heard by you and your contact if they are using Trillian.
Emotiblips
Users can stream songs and video in real-time with another user just by using Emotiblips. While WAV, MP3, WMV and MPG files are currently available, MOV files are still unsupported.
Trillian takes the clutter of instant messengers and condenses them all into one easy-to-use application. It takes the frustration out of using multiple apps so you can spend more time communicating and less time switching tabs.