Trillian Video

Trillian Video Transcript

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>> Hi, this is Jessica Dolcourt from CNETDownload.com. And this is a first look at Trillion, an enormously popular multi network IM client. On Trillion you can chat with friends from Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AIM Instant Messenger, and more all from just one account. Now Trillion comes in two versions. There's a basic version which is powerful enough for most users or if you want to splash out a little bit, you can go with the premium service. We're going to take a look at the basic version. The service works by automatically and remotely logging you on to each of your networks and then grouping your buddies into a single list. Of course you have to have joined the network your buddies are on in order to add them. Contacts that are online are organized by service and then by status. So idle buddies are listed below active ones. Offline buddies on the other hand are alphabetized below your online contacts. Of course you can change the sort order on all of this in the preferences. Choosing to alphabetize your contacts or sorting them completely by service. Chat conversations are tabbed within each window, but windows are also grouped by service. So you can have multiple windows open at once with multiple conversations in each window. Once you're in the conversation, there's a lot you can do. You can start an audio chat and transfer files, invite another buddy to join a conference and review the message history. You'll note that the video chat icon is grayed out for Trillion basic users. Clearly that's just up there as a teaser for the premium service. Down at the bottom you've got some text formatting controls and a ton of emoticons. Emoticons can spice up your messages, but they might also perplex some buddies on services that don't support Trillion's range of emoticons. It'll just look like random characters to them. To Trillion's credit, users can tweak the settings for most categories. I can make my buddy list more transparent for example. You can also disable instant look up which is a feature that calls up encyclopedia definitions from Wikipedia for words that appear in your chat window. I personally find it a little annoying. If you transfer files often like photos or documents, you can create standard collection folders. And you can also scan transferred files automatically for viruses. Trillion isn't too shabby looking, but the website hosts an entire skins library that users can actually search. You'll appreciate the download statistics that show how popular certain skins are, but the previews of the skins are much harder to access. As far as chat clients go, Trillion is a pretty full featured option with customization and emoticon flair. It doesn't do everything that some single network IMs do. For example mobile texting and support for voice over IP, but the main benefit here is that you get to group all of your contacts into one place. Users might also want to check out Pigeon, which is Trillion's main competitor in the multi network IM space. This is Jessica Dolcourt and we've been looking at Trillion. ^M00:02:51 [ Music ]