Trillian Astra is an instant messaging service that has a twist: it lets you combine all your friends from several messengers on a single interface, so only one application will be opened when you want to talk to everyone on your lists.

This software imports all the contacts of your selected instant messaging platforms (Windows Live Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, Skype), but it can also directly access social networks (Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, LinkedIn).

In addition, Trillian has borrowed most of the important features from other messengers that you like so much, and added new ones.

You can open a new window and chat, or send a quick message to a friend who has just signed in.

Friends can be sorted in the list in various ways (e.g. alphabetically, by conversation history size), but also "resized" on Trillian's interface (e.g. large, medium, small).

When you talk to a friend, you can insert a screen capture (by clicking and dragging the mouse), flag text as important (i.e. yellow text with red highlights), or change font to code style (which is especially useful if you're trying to explain a programming language to someone).

There are tons of emoticons you can play with (smiley faces, objects and symbols), and some of them are compatible with both Yahoo and MSN Messenger.

The chat history is better organized than in typical instant messengers, because here you can actually select a date from the calendar to view a conversation, as well as view any images exchanged between you and your friends.

Trillian supports several languages and uses minimal memory resources (a true improvement, when you think about the messengers you typically use).

We haven't found anything wrong with this instant messaging tool, and we highly recommend you test it for yourself. It's free, and it has a bit of everything!