trillian

Chat clients are great for interoffice communication and sending quick messages to co-workers and friends. The only problem is once you've chosen a particular chat client--usually decided by what your friend uses--you can only communicate from within that particular client's network. In other words, Yahoo chat users can only talk to other Yahoo chat users. If you've spent any time using chat clients, you know that people use several different apps, making it difficult to talk to everyone without downloading each one.

Fortunately, clever software developers came up with chat programs that would play nice with all the major clients, so you only needed one program to talk to everyone. There are a lot of these programs available for download and most are free. But in addition to the ability to chat with people on several networks, these clients also offer features and options that make them great apps in their own right.… Read more

The glossy hype over the Apple iPhone has certainly faded some, but that hasn't bothered the independent and corporate third-party developers that have been polishing up iPhone apps to run over the device's mobile Safari browser.

There's some sweet, juicy webware out there, including iPhone-friendly versions of multinetwork IM giant Trillian, and Twitter, the social-microblogging upstart.

There are also some lesser known but no less deserving offerings, like the Mobile Home headline feed, Box.net Web storage, and eBuddy IM, a Trillian and Meebo IM competitor.

Check out the CNET editors' roll call on iPhone Approll, and … Read more

Trillian's all-in-one instant messaging client made its name by offering chat-happy users a single account where they could connect with friends from all the major IM networks. While the popularity of some networks it supports has dwindled, Trillian has only improved.

Check out Trillian's moves in the First Look video below, or see how it stacks up to competing all-in-one IM clients in a CNET video with Neha Tiwari.

VelvetPuffin is a new download-based social network that's also a multi-IM client. When you try it you'll think it's half Meebo (a Web application) and half Trillian (a download), since when you log on to your VelvetPuffin account, it immediately runs up a Java/Flash application that's independent of the browser. That in itself is a cool idea.

Once the application is running, you can close the browser completely. You can also, from within the application, create a resident version of it on your hard disk, so you don't need to visit the Web page … Read more

This weekend has been a rather busy one for iPhone developers. Adobe Systems hosted the iPhoneDevCamp in its San Francisco offices, and the result is 50 new Web apps specifically designed for Apple's shiny new toy. Earlier today we wrote about some of our favorites, although one of the more important ones that didn't come out the developer's event was the new iPhone-optimized version of Trillian from Cerulean Studios. From the looks of the pictures on their blog, it looks a lot like iChat, and more important is finger- and eye-friendly, especially when compared to Meebo's current offerings.… Read more

Cerulean Studios on Monday released a "highly critical" security update for its Trillian multi-protocol chat software.

Attackers could exploit vulnerabilities in the character encoding for Trillian 3.1.5.1--specifically, the word-wrapping handling of UTF-8, the Unicode Transformation Format used for encoding characters in e-mail, instant messages and Web pages, iDefense Labs warned in its security advisory. The vulnerabilities potentially could affect earlier versions of the Trillian software as well, iDefense said.

Trillian, which supports Yahoo's Instant Messenger, AOL's AIM, MSN Messenger, and Internet-relay chat and ICQ ("I seek you") instant-messaging protocols, could be … Read more

Category: Communications

Trillian is a multiclient instant-messaging software program. Users can log in and use several instant-messaging protocols at once, all while in one application. The program was also one of the first chat apps to let users skin and customize the look and feel of their chat windows and buddy lists.

Cerulean Studios, the makers of Trillian, have been working on the next generation of Trillian, "Astra." The new app has a companion site that provides users with a Web-based version of the software. Users can then access their chat buddies while away from their home machines. … Read more

Editor's note: This is Part Two of a two-part series on multinetwork IM clients. Don't worry, we haven't forgotten about all-in-one desktop chatting.

All-in-one IM clients have much to offer the instant messaging butterfly. They organize your contacts from multiple networks while enabling customizations, plug-in support, and familiar emoticons. However, desktop chatting isn't always the best solution for the jet-set crowd.

Users who work off multiple computers and tire of downloading déjà vu could opt for browser-based chat, while the handheld-dependent might prefer a sturdy third-party IM client to replace a weak, nonnative browser or the single-network IM most compatible with their device (for instance, Pocket MSN for Windows Mobile users,).… Read more

In the rapidly changing world of computer technology, the laptop Power Downloader purchased only a couple of years ago has quickly become obsolete. In order to keep up with the most advanced Internet criminals, Power decided that it was time to upgrade his trusty laptop. Once he found the right one with the fastest processor, extra RAM, and the latest features, he brought it back to the Power Lair for the most important part of the process: downloading software!

While it seems like his computer goes out of date rather quickly, Power Downloader's favorite programs for a new computer … Read more