Yahoo! Hacks

Send Instant Messages Beyond Yahoo!

In a world where your friends are using different instant messaging systems, speak with all of them using Trillian.

If Yahoo! Instant Messenger is your favorite way to chat with friends, ideally everyone you know would also use Yahoo! Instant Messenger. But the world isn’t a perfect place, and there are many competing instant messaging applications, including AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), ICQ, Microsoft’s MSN Messenger, and Apple’s iChat. Unfortunately, a friend using AIM can’t talk with another friend using ICQ. And neither of these friends would be able to chat with you on Yahoo! Instant Messenger. Instead of trying to convince everyone you know to switch to your favorite application—or installing four different programs—you could switch to a universal instant messaging program: Trillian.

Cerulean Studios, the company behind Trillian, recognized this communication breakdown between instant messengers and decided to make a program that could speak with all of them. Trillian lets you chat with anyone on Yahoo!, AIM, ICQ, or MSN. It works by connecting directly with servers for each service and mimicking the messages sent from the standard messaging program. The basic version is free, and Trillian Pro offers a few more features for $25.

Trillian runs only on Windows 98 or above, so Linux and Mac users are out of luck. You’ll also need an account with each service you’d like to communicate with. But to get started, you’ll just need your Yahoo! ID ...