Trillian for Android Update Introduces Continuous Chat Feature [Video]
Trillian has long been one of the best multi-protocol instant messaging clients for personal computers – a personal favorite of mine for a while, actually – so you can imagine my excitement when I heard they were heading for an Android version of their application.
That’s not the story here, though. (I know how many of you are just dying to hear my personal raves. Mi apologias.) They’ve updated Trillian for Android to build 30 that adds a suite of features called “Continuous Chat”.
Continuous Chat is aiming to blur your chatting experience when going from the PC to the smartphone so that your conversations are never interrupted. (Pretty much how Google Talk on the desktop version of Gmail and on Android seem to do things. The difference is that they’ve done a lot of cool things to ensure this will work right no matter what. I think it’s best to let Trillian themselves describe it to you:
- Trillian shares chats between all devices in realtime. Hop off the home computer and continue chatting on the couch via the family iPad. Seamlessly switch between your mobile phone and work computer throughout your work day.
- Trillian supports optional cloud-based storage of chats. A crashed hard drive won’t take years of chatting history with it, and new devices are instantly initialized and up-to-date with your chat history – even mobile phones!
- Trillian uses presence technology to know where you’re active and makes notification decisions accordingly. For example, stay on Trillian for Android all day at work and you’ll receive no C2DM notifications, buzzes, or sounds because you’re active on your desktop.
- Trillian works out-of-the-box on all major IM services that support multiple points of presence, regardless of their particular nuances. For example, some services send messages to devices marked ‘online’ and not ‘away’, and others target messages to individual devices. The result can mean fragmented or one-sided conversations depending on the device. Trillian deals with all of this for you and keeps your chat windows tidy and sane.
- Trillian keeps track of read and unread messages, so your desktop isn’t blinking when you return to it after a day of chatting on your mobile. Even cooler, if you walk away from your desktop and someone starts messaging you, your iPhone will update its badge count as soon as it realizes your desktop was left idle with N unread messages.