Rourke on Technology

An instant messaging blog posted a preview of the next release of Trillian yesterday. As a longtime user of Trillian, I was interested in what the folks are Cerulean are working on. A single multi-protocol IM client is essential. My friends, like most, aren’t just using one IM network and seem to be spread across AOL, Yahoo!, MSN, and Google Talk. When I chose Trillian it was the only game in town for multi-protocol IM and I was really happy that the folks at Cerulean recognized the need for such a product. Recently, I’ve been a little less enthusiastic.

There have been multi-protocol IM clients for years now, but despite competition there hasn’t been much innovation. Adium X, for Mac OS only, seems to be the only company really pushing the envelope.

The single-network clients, on the other hand, have some nice features I’d love to see multi-protocol versions of in Trillian. Even without coming up with truly new features, bringing the innovations that AOL and Google have added to the multi-protocol IM world would make Trillian worth paying for. Heck, I’d move to GAIM if they built this stuff first, and I’m a paying Trillian Pro customer today. After reading about Astra, I’m worried that the Trillian Pro folks missed the ball.

Trillian 4.0 will be chock full of trendy “Web 2.0″-style social features. You’ll be able to create a webpage that is your “one home on the web,” linking to blogs, social networking sites, and providing information about you gathered from your computer. You’ll get to see what the weather is where your friends live and what CDs they’re listening to. You’ll get to see where your friends are if they’re traveling.

So what? Am I the only one who doesn’t want my computer to tell my friends’ everything about me automatically? I want an IM client that does instant messaging and does it really well across all applicable mediums. I want all the features folks using AOL IM and Google Talk get, only across all of these IM services. The top of my wishlist looks like so:

• Inline spellcheck without the need for a plug-in
• Online contact list with group and renaming support
• Web based client for sending and receiving IMs
• Standards-based secure IM support, preferably OTR
• Centralized online logging that is as searchable as GMail
• Mobile device clients (Blackberry in particular)

Yes, I’m a 30-something professional who uses IM for both work and fun. Yes, I’m lame and don’t care about video chat, “buzzing” people, MySpace, or what music my friends are listening to. I’m not alone, though. More and more people are using IM, and after age 22 they tend to care less and less about MySpace and Facebook. More people are being introduced to instant messaging at work. A client that supports SIP well (Exchange’s IM protocol, and Trillian supports this today via a plug-in) and also supports AOL IM and Google Talk well has real value. An common online contact list and online logging at work and at home is even better. The ability to log in from a public terminal at the airport or a trade show and have access to all that same stuff? Golden.

I’ve gotten ahead of myself. Even more important than the above list of new features is broad and solid support for as many IM platforms as possible. Cerulean has done a great job with Trillian here. Astra continues that with native Google Talk support, MySpace IM support (even if I don’t care), and an even easier API for building communications protocol plugins. Even today, Cerulean’s library of plugins for IM platforms is the best out there. I’m very happy to see that trend continuing.

As for the rest, I could be wrong. Astra might have all the features on my wish list and more. I hope so. I posted these as feature requests on the Cerulean blog, so we’ll see if the folks on the Trillian team have anything to say.