The newest member of the Trillian family is not overly far from public release but can it stand the test of being competitive with today’s messenger software?

Upon clicking the Setup.exe, I found the installation and upgrade from my previous version of Trillian both easy and quick with it easily importing my settings from Trillian 3.1. However not everything was as smooth as I hoped. After starting up Astra, I noticed that while it managed to connect all my accounts, bar taking a while to do so, it wouldn’t connect my ICQ account, I scratched my head and checked to see what had happened and apparently it’s forgotten my ICQ account, removing all references from it in the Identities and Connections Menu.

A bit of an annoying thing due to not remembering my ICQ number. This was eventually resolved by looking into my ICQ Logs. The next issue I came across was that initially it wouldn’t send my messages, telling me that it could not send them. I restarted Astra, and this promptly resolved the issue.

The guys at Cerulean Studios have obviously been trying to close the gap between the lack of features Trillian supports of MSN and other Messenger Networks. And it shows, Trillian Astra allows for drawing, Emotiblips, Buzzing (Oh yay), and a few other features which haven’t either been used or utilized in Trillian previous versions. Sadly, however, Trillian does not have proper support for Webcam at this time — the lack of this feature is astonishing in that this is probably the most sought out feature in Trillian. There are settings for the feature, however they are greyed out, and I can only imagine that it is something Cerulean Studios are working on and will probably be implemented before actual release.

Astra’s range of skins are limited at the moment, however look quite decent with a large amount of colours to use. However using some of these skin colours will mean the Drawing feature will not appear properly and is something Cerulean need to work on.

On the bright side, Trillian’s strongest point has always been the range of plug-ins, and Astra has backward compatibility with a large quantity of them, with this and that there will undoubtedly be many plug-ins made especially for Astra, I can only imagine that the range of plug-ins will be vast. Including usage of Gtalk, MySpace and Xfire which are all currently available and work well with Astra.

All in all, if the guys at Cerulean Studios keep working hard on this, this will be undoubtedly the best Multi-Client Messenger yet with near-complete interoperability.

Pros:
+ Skins really do load faster.
+ Less memory usage.
+ Much faster redrawing time.
+ Visually attractive.
+ Backward support with older plug-ins.

Cons:
- No properly implemented webcam feature.
- Needs better compatibility for the drawing feature with it’s own skins.

Trillian Astra 4.0.0.52 was used for this review which is in fact, A closed
Alpha version.

I was thinking recently about Myspace and YouTube and the power they currently hold, and it’s quite apparent that the power and influence they can use is quite proportionate. The Internet has always been a successful communicative medium since the Internet hit home users, however I see YouTube and Myspace as exceptional cases in which they have exceeded the stereotypical Website and became major power-players in the Real World, in not only Entertainment but Politics and News.

When YouTube was founded by several former paypal members, it took the Internet and quite literally the Internet by storm. Since it’s creation there has been Internet celebrities by the boat load, however unlike any period before, there has never been this many Internet Celebrities breaking into success in the Offline world. (See lonelygirl15; Brooke Brodack) Does this mean, in another generation onwards, that the merger of Internet and Offline forms of Entertainment will be complete? If one becomes famous on the Internet, they will be famous all over? When you consider the ever-growing numbers in which this is happening, it’s not so unbelievable.

News? Both YouTube and Myspace have been mentioned in the Offline Media numerous times, often painted in a bad light. Is this due to the fact they can be considered a threat in public manipulation? Possibly, but either way they are seen as extra-successful mediums on which to reach out to the public with messages, news and commercial marketing. It’s a given now that Myspace and YouTube make more money then most TV Channels do monthly. Both are even referenced in the Offline Mediums of TV, Newspapers and Magazines. Threats? Yes, and both Google and Rupert Murdock see this medium as being the future of not contributing information but controlling it.

The problem about these mediums receiving so much power is what they can do with it. Too much power will mean sooner of later someone will slip up and use it. And conterversies relating to manipulation of the public have already occurred.

Myspace and YouTube alike have both been used by Politics as staging wars between the political parties of their respective countries, both the Australian Liberal and Labour parties, and the American Republican and Democrat parties have successfully utilized the medium. This is both a double-edged sword. On the one side, the parties reach out to an audience otherwise untapped, and on the other is the fact that utilizing these sites are effectively giving them power. As for the future of these sites, we can only guess they will grow larger and other sites will be born which in turn will be successful. But from what I can see the Internet has never been stronger, and in only a few decades, the Internet will be the biggest medium with events which will occur being literally embedded in both the Offline and Online Worlds.

Funnily enough in a September 2006 investor meeting, News Corp. COO Peter Chernin claimed that virtually all modern Web applications (naming YouTube, Flickr, and Photobucket) were really just “driven off the back of MySpace“.

How very untrue.

As Will said in this post, Wireless Security is essential for an efficient and reliable network. You would honestly be amazed in how many Wireless Hotspots are either badly secured or not even secured at all, I have came around 30 Hotspots in my immediate vicinity out of 52 which are badly/not secured.

In addition to Will’s handy advice, I’d like to throw in my few cents about the issue.

svA/svA2 With Radius

svA/2 with a Radius Server or Wireless Access Point Database is easily the most secure way for your Wireless network. Making it nigh impenetrable, due to individual accounts and passwords, and the fact you can throw things in like certificates which would even make the most skilled hacker cringe and sweat trying to break into your network.

Do not use WEP unless you have no other Choice.

WEP is barely security these days. Think of it as a very cheap garbage bag trying to hold lots of spiky bits, it’s going to come apart. Why? Because WEP can easily be cracked in under a minute depending on the security length of the WEP key. There are programs out there which sniff the wireless packets automatically before cracking the password, which can even let a twelve year old gain access to your network.

Hide your E/SSID

Hiding your ESSID will not prevent determined Hackers, but it can pass basically basic scans, and be a small annoyance to people trying to break into your wireless network.

It doesn’t hurt to use MAC Filtering

While Will highlights the fact that Mac Filtering can easily be overcome, not everybody can do it. It takes someone going in and after monitoring Wireless signals, spoofing(Taking the identity of) a MAC Address belonging to the actual network. However like hiding your E/SSID, It’s another annoyance, and is harder to overcome then the above. Think about it this way, you’re basically barricading your network against attacks. And each thing is a hurdle. All these things together can make your network safe as it can possibly be.

Recently iiNet signed a deal with Fairfax Digital and Anytime, this is rather significant in the way average users use the internet, by granting the ability for people to stream movies to their desktops and media centres at home, in a type of rivalry to Cable Television such as Foxtel.

By one ISP Provider signing a deal, it opens the door for more flexibility and options on a normal Broadband account, and indeed many ISPs will follow this to compete with iiNet and any other ISP who takes the same path. Video on Demand (VoD) is not a new technology, being around since the early 90’s, however VoD as we know it today only started settling in around 1999-2000. Currently, the only VoD Provider in Australia is TransACT, however they only provide to customers in ACT, so having a significantly large ISP like iiNet and it’s service coverage offering VoD, will bring it to nearly everywhere, especially when iiNet is still rolling-out it’s iiDSLAMs in a fairly fast time.

But back to the original point, Offering VoD in the coverage iiNet has will pretty much revolutionize the way average Australians use the internet, no longer will users just download email and chat, but partake in watching movies and TV Series in a way which would rival Foxtel, but be tremendously cheaper. Especially as stated here:

Anytime on Volt has signed a 12-month deal with internet provider iiNet to allow iiNet customers to download the movies — some of them close to one gigabyte — without affecting their monthly download limits.

So when iimedia starts, it should be somewhat interesting to watch the next twelve months afterwards, because in the monopolized market which is Broadband in Australia, this could both increase iiNet’s stake in the market and either change internet usage drastically or fail in the attempt.

Well, not literally ten thousand, really only two. But first, what am I talking about? Well it all starts with the fact that nearly everything these days is manufactured in China, and everything is pirated in China for sure, from Motorola Bluetooth Headsets to a Rolex.

Where am I going with this? Well you see, being like the average consumer I’m a sucker for low prices, and saw on eBay a Sandisk 1GB MiniSD Card for a reasonable price. So I purchased it and it was shipped from the special administrative region of Hong Kong. When I got it, I didn’t bother checking what lied beneath hidden within the MiniSD.

Now, my PC is pretty secure from threats on the Internet but somehow I got two nasty little Trojans, where did these come from?! I pondered, I turned off XP’s Hidden Files and Folders and OS Files and started my manual manhunt, and even though I managed to get rid of the files, I had no clues where they originated from until I decided to do an Avast Scan on all removable devices, it alerted me to the miniSD with the two exact files with a 2006 Creation date (What the? My OS has only been running since Feb ‘07!), I tried to delete the two hidden little files on the miniSD and it denied me the satisfaction of cleansing its impurity.

I do find it interesting that a miniSD, probably a cheap knockoff, came with two Backdoor Trojans, the infamous wscft.exe and EXPLORER.exe (Obviously trying to pass off as the shell.) Either-way, it’s made me more alert when dealing with Computer Electronics coming from the region and let it be a lesson to others, Buyer Beware they may try to gain access to your PC.

Well also being a webservice provider, I knew it was only a matter of time before I came across a real phising scheme, and last week I did.

I was contacted by both Paypal and the Federal Police as an account on one of my servers was setup to be a fake paypal site and the addressed was spammed out. The account happened to belong to a client of one of my resellers. So I checked around, got logs, information and suspended the site.

Turns out the account was hacked into by a mob in Eastern Europe, Romania to be precise. Doesn’t suprise me but what’s to make it worse was the reseller knew something odd was happening to the account as the client hadn’t accessed it yet. Yet he failed to do anything.. Gah, people are so silly.

Switching to iinet for my ISP. Eventually had to do it unfortunately. TPG was promising to upgrade the Liverpool Exchange to ADSL2+ since March, however they dropped it from their DSLAM Rollout without any notice or explanation (Cheers TPG).

You may think that my ISP transfer might be solely based on getting a better speed, while this is partially correct, it isn’t completely right. You see, I use to be on TPG’s 1.5Mbit Plan with 20GB a month for a measly fifty dollars a month, true it was a plan too good to be true, but it lasted a while, I was on it for a little over a year. When they dropped it, purporting to Telstra’s price-hike on wholesale prices to ISPs, they had Liverpool on their Rollout, and I thought “Hey, I only have to be on another of their plans for a month or two and then I can get ADSL2+! For cheaper too!” So with that I choose TPG’s 1.5Mbit, 25GB, for $69.95.

The Plan was fine, but when the sole reason I was on it disappeared without a trace then I swore that I would switch ISPs unless it somehow miraculously appeared again. So here I am about to switch to iinet for $60 with VoIP, waiting for TPG to drop me as it was due to be cancelled on the 10th, so iinet can pick me up. (Really a shame that you can’t churn to ADSL2+).

I probably would have gone with Internode had they serviced my area, but ah well, beggars can’t be choosers. As someone currently in tune with the ISP community, I can honestly say that iinet offer the best packages out there at the moment.

I mean, for $60 you get:

* Up to 24Mbit Speed.
* 21 GB (7GB onpeak / 14 off)
* VoIP
* 30MB web space (Beats TPG’s 10MB)
* Back up dialup account (Something alot of ISPs Lack)

My Ex-Plan was:

* 1.5Mbit Speed
* 20 GB
* 10MB Web Space

A significant difference. Well worth the price, it has my approval.

#!/usr/bin/perl

print “\n”;
print “################################################\n”;
print “##                                                                                                 ##\n”;
print “##       Multiplication by                                                                    ##\n”;
print “##                 By Brett Lee-Price                                                       ##\n”;
print “##                                                                                                 ##\n”;
print “##            The following should present an aligned                             ##\n”;
print “##             Multiplication table. Well hopefully…                                  ##\n”;
print “##                                                                                                 ##\n”;
print “################################################\n”;

print “\n”;
print “\n”;

for ( $a = 1; $a < 13; $a++ ) #Initial Multiplication of * x Range 1-12.
{
for ( $b = 6; $b < 11; $b++ ) #Range of 6-10 to times against above range.
{
printf "| %2d * %2d=%3d ", $b, $a, $a*$b ; #Formatting
}
print "\n";

}
print "\n";
print "\n";

The PERL file is located here. Again, formatting looks shocking here.

Get this, I had setup a cancellation of my TPG ADSL account on the 2nd of Augest and this was processed on the 4th according to the email sent back. My account is suppose to be cancelled on the 10th of September, I chose this date due to two reasons.

1. It is a mandatory requirement to give TPG, a 30 day notice.
2. My current Billing Cycle ends on the 11th of September.

With that in mind, there’s no possible way TPG would bill me for the next billing cycle even though I have set a cancellation before that, right? Wrong. TPG billed me for $69.95 today for next month, which shouldn’t have happened at all..

So I decided to ring TPG, oh how I love how it’s call centre moved to the Phillipines, and didn’t have to hold long fortunately. I spoke to someone and told them the details, and after a long hold, she told me she’ll send an email to the billing department and that I’ll be refunded after my cancellation has taken place on the 10th, which will require 3-10 days to be refunded. So I have to wait a possible maximum of 15 days to get refunded for something they shouldn’t have taken out? They took out money they didn’t need for a non-existant billing cycle, out of my bank account which I Did need?

All I can say is well done, TPG, well done. This might make my switch to Iinet more problematic, financially.

#!/usr/bin/perl

print ”
“;
print “################################################
“;
print “## ##
“;
print “## Welcome to the Numbers Game ##
“;
print “## By Brett Lee-Price ##
“;
print “## ##
“;
print “## Rules: Enter 3 Numbers between 0 and 999, ##
“;
print “## The first Answer will be the ultimate ##
“;
print “## Answer as well! No matter which numbers ##
“;
print “## you enter, it's guaranteed! ##
“;
print “## ##
“;
print “################################################
“;

print ”
“;
print “Please enter Number One: “;
$Input[0] = ; # Input one
$Number[0] = $Input[0] + 1998; #Number one being calculated.
while ($Input[0] <=0 || $Input[0] >= 1000) #While Statement for Number One
{
print “An Invalid Number was entered. Please Re-enter Number One: “;
chomp ($Input[0] =);
$Number[0] = $Input[0] + 1998;
$count = $count + 1;
if($count == 4) {
print ”
“;
print “Too many invalid attempts! Terminating Program.”;
print ”
“;
exit;
}
}
print “The Ultimate Answer will be: ${Number[0]}.”; #Ultimate Answer
print ”
“;

print “Please enter Number Two: “;
$Input[1] = ; #Input Two
$Number[1] = 999 - $Input[1]; #Number two being calculated.
$Final[0] = $Input[0] + $Input[1] + $Number[1]; #Part One of Final being worked out with Input One, Two And Answer of Two.
while ($Input[1] <=0 || $Input[1] >= 1000) #While Statement for Number two
{
print “An Invalid Number was entered. Please Re-enter Number Two: “;
chomp ($Input[1] =);
$Number[1] = 999 - $Input[1];
$Final[0] = $Input[0] + $Input[1] + $Number[1];
$count = $count + 1;
if($count == 4) {
print ”
“;
print “Too many invalid attempts! Terminating Program.”;
print ”
“;
exit;
}
}
print “Second answer is: ${Number[1]}.”; #Answer Two
print ”
“;

print “Please enter Number Three: “;
$Input[2] = ; #Input Three
$Number[2] = 999 - $Input[2]; #Number Three being calculated.
$Final[1] = $Input[2] + $Number[2]; #Part Two of Final being worked out with Input Three and Answer Three.
while ($Input[2] <=0 || $Input[2] >= 1000) #While Statement for Number Three
{
print “An Invalid Number was entered. Please Re-enter Number Three: “;
chomp ($Input[2] =);
$Number[2] = 999 - $Input[2];
$Final[1] = $Input[2] + $Number[2];
$count = $count + 1;
if($count == 4) {
print ”
“;
print “Too many invalid attempts! Terminating Program.”;
print ”
“;
exit;
}
}
print “Third answer is: ${Number[2]}.”; #Answer Three
print ”
“;
$Ultimate = $Final[0] + $Final[1]; #Ultimate Answer being calculated.
print ”
“;
print “The Ultimate Answer is: ${Ultimate}.
“; #Ultimate Answer is displayed.
print ”
“;
print “Add every number asides from the first answer!
“;
print “See? Magic!
“;
print ”
“;
print ”
“;

Edit: Looks somewhat ugly here due to the formatting, etc. I've included a better looking and working version here!