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beta IM review trillian astra

So I’ve been playing around with the new alpha version of Trillian from Cerulean Studios Trillian Astra. It is currently in closed alpha testing, but if you go to the site you can put in your email address to be notified when they start inviting more people or go into public beta.

My initial thoughts are good, don’t forget it is in alpha. It’s a little buggy, which is to be expected, but even with those few bugs it isn’t stopping me from using it as my main IM program. 

This build of Trillian supports:

• AIM
• Google Talk
• ICQ
• IRC
• Jabber
• MSN
• MySpace
• rendezvous
• Yahoo

I am currently using AIM, GTalk, MSN , and trying out Rendezvous on Vista Business. There are a lot of themes (different colors) to choose from. You have a trillian astra account that holds all your individual accounts. After you set up Trillian the first time any subsequent installs automatically include your individual accounts, including passwords. This is great if you are like me and never remember your passwords. As you can see I’ve chosen purple

I also now understand why you can turn off the My Contacts List! Makes taking images so much easier.

A few things I like and that took me a few seconds to realize were how to tell if someone is typing. There are actually 2 ways that, I’m sad to say, took me a few minutes to notice.

The actual app looks like this when no one is typing (only the bottom part where you type):

 Here is what it looks like in the taskbar:

That number means that you have missed 1 message since it was last in focus. Now for pictures of them each when your friend is typing:

 Here’s the taskbar:

Those are nice, out of the way but obvious so you know if someone is typing back to you.

Also when connected with GTalk it tells you if you have mail and how many. The only thing it is missing is a manual way to have it check and a description of each message.

Everything looks clean and nice, very mimicking of current trends. This is also the first version of Trillian that I’ve had any success transferring a file. I sent a file to a friend who was using AIM 6.

I could send to her however I could not get it to work with her sending it to me. 

If you happen to have the iPhone, they just announced on the blog that they are designing a version specifically for the iPhone. They will be testing that soon so if you have an iPhone sign up for the alpha test and in the comments/about you area add that you have one.

As of now I like the new version of Trillian the only other protocol I would like to see would be Skype but as they say here on the site it’s not an open protocol and much more complex.

There are still things they need to work on. I’ve had it freeze my desktop twice and it takes forever to login but for an alpha version it’s very usable and promising.  

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update

I’ve just updated the About page… which means it now exists so check it out!

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Systm did a good job of taking apart the iPhone if you like quick and dirty but head over to AnandTech for a cleaner more thorough take apart.

I’ve never been a big fan of Apple but the more I hear about the iPhone, which is hard not to hear about, makes me want to at least get my hands on one, if not have my own!   Don’t tell anyone else…

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cool new site pownce startup

Pownce.com is the latest startup from Kevin Rose. 

Pownce is a way to send messages, files, links, and events to your friends. You’ll create a network of the people you know and then you can share stuff with all of them, just a few of them, or even just one other person really fast.

It’s a lot like Twitter or a Tumblr blog mixed with a bit of facebook. The name is catchy (not sure where it came from) and the design looks great. I love the color combination some browns, blues and greens. The personal themes are well designed also. I just got the invite yesterday and haven’t had much time to check it out but it looks cool, just not sure how useful it will be to me. Only time will tell.

One great feature is that you can have sets of friends. Group your friends by interests or how you know them and when you send files/links/messages you can target specific groups. The next step I’d like to see would to be adding privacy settings based on these groups. 

 http://pownce.com/techgirl

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cracking hacking iphone revision3 systm

Revision3s show Systm has released an entertaining SubSystm about pulling an allnighter in the iPhone line. The end is the best. It says “Released June 29th 2007″ …. next screen “Cracked June 30th 2007″

 To all those who already have their hands on an iPhone… happy cracking!

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code geek humor lolcatz lolcode

Ok, the lolcatz were funny but how about some LOLCode:

 All I can say is oh my.

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humor lolcat lolcatz

According to wikipedia an lolcat is an:

image macro featuring a photograph of a cat with a humorous and idiosyncratic caption. The name “lolcat” is a compound of lol and cat.^[1][2] lolcats are also referred to as cat macros.^[3]

lolcats are created for the purpose of sharing with others on imageboards and other internet forums, especially on Saturdays (”Caturdays”).^[4] lolcats are similar to other animal-based image macros such as the O RLY? owl,^[5] but the cuteness of cats “enhances”^[6] the appeal and increasing prominence^[7][8][9] of the Internet meme. lolcat is an example of anthropomorphisation.

lolcat images usually consist of a photo of a cat with a large caption characteristically formatted in a sans serif font such as Impact or Arial Black.^[10] The image is, on occasion, digitally edited for effect. The caption generally acts as a speech balloon encompassing a comment from the cat, or as a description of the depicted scene. The caption is intentionally written with deviations from standard English spelling and syntax,^[10] featuring “strangely-conjugated verbs, but [a tendency] to converge to a new set of rules in spelling and grammar.”^[11] These altered rules of English have been referred to as a type of pidgin^[10] or baby talk.^[12] The text parodies the grammar-poor patois stereotypically attributed to internet slang.

 More than I thought there would be but they are cute. I’m on page 30 of 89 here: ICanHasCheezburger.com.

 Strange phenomena but cats rly are cuter than owls. For even more kitties check out LOLcatz . 

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email support helpdesk helperoo

Helperoo is your email support system with small in mind. There’s no bloat and no complication. That’s perfect for small teams who don’t live inside a giant call center.

Looks like it would be cool if you have a small time support company or do support on something that doesn’t have a large user base, perhaps freelancing. There is a free version that gives you 200 emails per month and is ad supported whereas the pro version for $12 a month is ad free, ssl, and unlimited emails. 

If anything they should include a demo or walk through video. There is one small image of what I’m assuming the email controls are, which looks nice and simple, no clutter, but something more w/o having to sign-up would be good.

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