Trillian 4.1 – One Giant Twitterific Leap

I’ve been using Trillian Pro for years.  It has always made managing the various chat mediums I have to stay contacted much easier and that makes my life better, so I’m willing to pay for the app.  Now, though, with the introduction of Trillian Astra, the team over at Trillian seems to be honing in more and more on what exactly I want to have as an every day social power user.  The newest release, Trillian 4.1 (released today) is no exception, catching me a little off guard with some of the great options it has provided me with.

In addition to using every available chat medium to stay in touch with different groups of people, I use Twitter… a lot.  I have several accounts for several different reasons and they all have unique needs.  In the past these unique needs have made me do a lot of juggling to be able to manage everything.

No more, thanks to Trillian’s new release of Astra.  I mean, the client has all of the basics that you would expect, but in addition to those basics are the following reasons that Trillian Astra is now my favorite Windows based desktop Twitter client:

Multiple bit.ly Account Support

Sure, lots of clients allow you to manage multiple Twitter accounts.  I’ve been using TweetDeck with decent success on that front for some time.  Then there are some clients which actually allow you to integrate with your bit.ly account, so that when the Twitter client automatically shortens a link for you the link is added to your bit.ly account so you can track it like you would any other.  But what about clients that let you manage multiple Twitter accounts which are each attached to their own unique bit.ly accounts?  Is it really that mind-boggling that this would be something a power user would want?  Who knows, but Trillian Astra got it right.  Add your Twitter account then right click on the account in your contact list, click settings and WHAM-O you’re ready to enter your bit.ly API key and go to town.

Intelligent Character Limitation Counting

Something else that other clients should get on the ball with is knowing how many characters things like image uploads to TwitPic are going to take.  No more wondering, biting your nails and hoping that your image upload URL doesn’t throw your character count over by one character, ending your perfect digital planetary alignment.

Tweet Screenshots

This one is really nice for technical tweets / blogs / etc.  Basically, you can use any image in your tweet via TwitPic by dragging it into your message.  But if you right click in your message, you have the ability to actually trim out a screenshot to use.  Nifty!

Side Docking

I don’t check news sites any more.  I don’t check my favorite band sites any more.  I don’t have to, because I have a constant stream of updates that interest me flowing through Twitter.  Now, thanks to Trillian’s function of docking to the side of your monitor (reserving space so that maximized windows don’t overlap it), something they’ve had for a long time, that stream is constantly available at a literal glance to my left.

There are, of course, still a few issues that exist (when you open a retweet you have to type / delete a character for the character counter to register) and some functionality I’d love to see added, but nothing that overrides how awesome the new Trillian is at managing my fairly advanced Twitter needs.

Notification Placement

This isn’t a Twitter specific update, nor is it unique to Trillian.  But the ability to place your notification popups where you want them, even with multiple monitor support, means they don’t get in the way of something else that you were trying to do.  It’s a really nice touch that makes a big difference to me.

Nice job guys!  Now, about that post I made on your forums asking for the ability to have a transparent background with fully visible text…