How to add services to Trillian Astra, the ultimate multinetwork client

The new version of the best-known multinetwork messaging client brings new functions and support for extra platforms, and most important, a clear intention of simplifying its use. Let’s see how to add services like Twitter, Facebook, Windows Messenger MSN, etc. to our Trillian Astra.

Those who are taking their first steps in Trillian Astra will be aided by the excellent settings assistant by means of which they can add their accounts to combine the profiles of the several social networks in one single program. Or, if you have already used Trillian Astra and you want to add an account, like for instance your Facebook profile, this is what you need to do.

From Trillian Astra’s main interface you must access the option ‘Trillian’>> ‘Manage connections’ in the menu bar on the top. There you will see all the accounts associated to Trillian Astra up to now, but you can also add new connection using the button on the right bottom corner of the window. Another window will appear where you must indicate the service you want to add, such as Facebook in this case. Then fill in the fields ‘User name’, ‘E-mail address’ and ‘Password’ and click on ‘Connect’.

This is all you need to do to add a new service to Trillian Astra. In this way, you’ll be able to access it together with other services, like Twitter, Google Talk, ICQ, Windows Messenger MSN, all of them together in the same window.

Windows Live Essentials 2011 arrived with a strong foothold: what are waiting to download it?

Hotmail users may be the first ones to experience the new features Microsoft is releasing through Windows Live Essentials 2011 suite. In fact, many of them have already found, when accessing their accounts, Hotmail’s “new features”, which are basically related to being able to integrate to Microsoft’s free applications. However, there are other changes that affect all the programs, like Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, Writer, Messenger and Live Mail.

Among the main changes in Wave 4 we can mention the Ribbon bar that was added to all the products. It had already been included in Office’s latest versions, but its inclusion to Windows Live Essentials will be highly appreciated by Writer’s or Movie Maker’s users.

The changes in the menus greatly improve Microsoft’s blogs editor, which becomes one of the most powerful tools of its kind. Also, Movie Maker has a renewed effects gallery, with new possibilities like, for example, including a webcam to home video editing.

As regards Live Mail, Microsoft has made a great effort to simplify the process of sending photos. Now they can be shared through SkyDrive and the e-mail content becomes just a preview of the multimedia content. In this way, the task is much easier and we don’t need to attach the document, which takes up space.

In addition, the new Windows Live Messenger will be able to integrate with other social networks, like LinkedIn or Facebook, directly.

Other new features can be found in Photo Gallery. Windows Live Essentials’s new version provides useful tools like the face recognition tool, which will enable us to tag photos automatically, as well as Photo Fuse, which can fuse similar photos by taking what we like most of each of them.

Windows Live Essentials 2011 is already available for download. Now it’s up to you to test each of Microsoft’s free applications and services. Its new features are more than enough to raise our highest expectations.

Digsby: instant messenger and social networks on a single program

The increase of the popularity of the social networks on the internet has caused that every time, we are registered in more of these sites and it becomes tiresome to connect to our accounts on each of them. To avoid this we find Digsby, in which, from a single window, we’ll be able to be on many at the same time, integrating and boosting our connections.

This powerful multiplatform messenger client supports a great number of protocols. MSN, Yahoo!, AIM, Google Talk, Facebook Chat, MySpace IM, ICQ and Jabber is a list that doesn’t leave almost anything out. Moreover, it doesn’t only provide us with the possibility to start conversations, but it also gives us multiple options to personalize our contacts list as a quick access to their profiles or the storing of the conversations.

If this wasn’t enough, we can also determine individually our status on each of the messenger services to which we are connected. Furthermore, it gives us the possibility to chat, independently of the service to which it belongs, with all our contacts from a single window and separating them in eyelashes. It also adds some additional features, like being able to do videoconferences. Although this last thing is easy to do, the protocol from which it does it it’s from its own, so you have to access a URL provided by Digsby when the videoconference starts.

Another of the Digsby features which turns it into a tool more than interesting is that from its main window, and by only passing the mouse on top of the names of our email accounts or 2.0 webs, we’ll be able to see the most recent updates or our inbox. Furthermore, this way, we’ll be able to update our status on the social networks, or answer emails with a single click.

Maybe the only thing against this application is that it is suspected that in those moments in which we are inactive, it uses resources of our own system to perform actions of distributed computing. However, this feature must be previously accepted to be able to run, although many question it’s not properly informed about its implications.

Beyond that and acting cautiously, Digsby is an option of great quality among the multiplatform clients that allows us to simplify our connection to the social networks integrating them on a single interface.

ICQ 7: now it’s possible to integrate different social networks

After being the first massive program of instant messaging 13 years ago, ICQ disappeared from the spotlight. As a matter of fact, it didn’t disappear, it just lost market to other programs of the same kind as Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger.

Trying to gain prominence again, we find ICQ 7. The program counts with an updated and modern interface. As soon as we enter we find a series of eyelashes from where we can add contacts and do searches, see status updates and send SMS, apart from having on the top part a field to update our status.

This new version of the program not only lets us chat through its own protocol, but also integrates with different social networks like Facebook, Digg, Flickr, Twitter and YouTube, being able to update our status directly from ICQ 7 and simultaneously.

To be able to synchronize with other 2.0 webs, after we registered and got our user on ICQ 7, in the event we didn’t have one before, we go to “Set up your feeds” and on the eyelash “My box” from which we’ll be redirected to a webpage in which we’ll need to enter our username and password. We’ll be able to see our contacts’ updates directly from the ICQ 7 window.

Furthermore, it counts with the traditional contact search that will allow us to locate contacts on the area we want, and start a conversation from the window of the program. ICQ 7 chat window looks very similar to the one of the last Windows Live Messenger versions. It has incorporated buttons for emoticons, to send files, change fonts and more. Moreover, we can also add an image as avatar apart from being able to see our contacts’.

Another remarkable improvement is the incorporation of the possibility to send SMS messaged from the same window of the program in a quick and simple way within a few clicks, being able to store the numbers of our contacts to easily access them again.

This way, ICQ 7, turning into a multiprotocol client, looks for the integration with other social networks, recover territory. If it’s true that there are other applications that perform the same task like Digsby, Pidgin or Miranda IM to name a few, it’s worth it trying the news of this old contender.

As it became known recently among off-the-record versions, the new Windows Live Messenger version will try to integrate itself with other social networks like Facebook or Twitter. What’s truth is that there are already other instant messenger clients like Digsby, Pidgin or ICQ 7 that perform this integration, although in different ways.
ICQ 7, the new version of the messenger that reigned during the end of the 90s and beginning of this century, incorporates apart from an updated and attractive interface, a support from which it’s possible to access to the notifications from Facebook, Delicious, Digg, Flickr, Twitter y YouTube. Apart from being able to carry on conversations through its own protocol, from the ICQ 7 window you can update the status of the social networks, in simultaneous or individually, as also upload photos. However, it doesn’t have any feature for the user to chat with his contacts, friends or followers from its own windows, and in some cases, this can be a little small to view the content of some of the social networks.

Who lets us do this is Digsby, which, as opposed to the previous one, doesn’t have its own protocol. Despite this, this program is a messenger client that has support for many protocols like Msn, Yahoo!, AIM, Google Talk, Facebook Chat, MySpace IM, Jabber and even ICQ.

Moreover, it lets us easily see the updates for the status, notifications and other publications from our contacts on social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter. We can also see from its window the inbox from email services like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, AOL/IM Mail and from POP e IMAP accounts. Digsby becomes a very good option integrating a great amount of options on its window.

An application that started developing long time ago as a multiprotocol is Pidgin. It has support for a great number of instant messenger protocols like MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, AIM and IRC, to name the most popular ones. Apart from that, using an add-on you can also incorporate Facebook and publish on Twitter. Furthermore, it counts with many options to administer our contacts and conversations, with automatic messages, and other unusual options like the “psychic mode”, which is known as one of the bests on that aspect.

Without a doubt, the tendency that comes developing for years of integrating the 2.0 Webs with the instant messengers it’s going to be a highlight in a few months. We can follow this trend by using any of these programs, it can be Digsby, if what interest us the most is to have access to all the services on a single window, Pidgin, if we want to have probably the best messenger client as regards options without losing sight of the integration possibilities with other 2.0 webs, or it can be ICQ 7, if we go for an updated and attractive interface.

Apple will feature an application to add social networks as Facebook and Twitter to its OS X

What will Apple borrow next? Year after year, during September in Apple Campus located in Cupertino, California is where this software company frequently acquires new technologies and developments.

To its traditional launches related to iPod, iPhone or iTunes products, this time rumors have surfaced that this time Apple will surprise us with an item of news that has been long-expected by many Mac users. It is said that this software company could feature a new application to integrate social networks with its MAC OS X. A step forward that nowadays with the rage and enthusiasm that web 2.0 and social network as Facebook or Twitter has brought, this company cannot leave it unattended.

Although this application will be integrated with most social networks, it could also add iTunes, matter that make some users uncomfortable. This is seen as a problem by many users, as the matter of fact, the application was first developed or thought to access music files, videos, etc. On the other hand, we found some enthusiastic users about this news. Above all, we can say that companies like Apple never develop or launch a product if this wasn´t previously accepted on the market and this remind us, the well-known long waiting queues whenever a new product from this company is on sale.

One of the advantages this utility (iTunes) could bring as a result of its integration is that we could publish the song we are listening to in different sites. Furthermore, this utility could enable us to access social networks directly from any application we have in our computer being this comfortable compared with accessing form the web. For instance, those MSN users that have any of this versions installed on their computer can access it by going to www.webmessenger.msn.com.

All in all, the majority of Apple´s users or consumers has accepted their products and might not be long since MAC OX S is integrated with social networks as Facebook, Twitter or Friendfeed. This could be a great opportunity so as the companie can take full advantage of their success. What´s more, this could be the best occasion to announce on September, its launching month, the development of their own social network.

iTunes 9

Apple promised big things for the launch of iTunes last September and everybody is talking about it. The result? User’s hope that their dreams can came true. A new report suggests that the next version of Apple’s iTunes could carry support for Blu-ray discs, visual management and rearrangement capabilities for iTunes Store software, and integration with social media Web sites. Rumors have grown and now people doubt of it.

If we carefully think about these options one by one, we can´t stop thinking that there is no support for Mac regarding Blu-ray. We can only wish and hope that the next iMac will have the possibility of adding this format.

On the other hand, the organization in iPhone and iPod Touch devices is one of the iTunes actual disadvantages, being much useful the direct download from Smartphone than using this software. The version 9 should try to improve this feature.

Last but not least, regarding social network integration, we should consider the public changes from the beginning until iTunes Store consolidation.

Different music streaming service such us MySpace, the possibility of accessing new disc from p2p or file sharing sites and the grow of social network as Twitter or Facebook to share content shows that these is a field in constant changing. Perhaps, this is exactly where Apple needs to strengthen, offering iTunes users the possibility of sharing in their profiles a play list o track they are listening to.

As they said, “It’s good fishing in troubled waters” so we only need to wait to September to see what news Apple has for us.