Trillian, the popular multiple-personality IM client, recently upgraded to version 5, giving it a refreshed interface, improved social integration, and, get this, all of the Pro features from previous versions, all for free. Now every user can enjoy themes, activity history viewer, and multiple location sign-in, along with the newly developed continuous client feature, which keeps chats synced across all devices. For now, these upgrades have only hit the Windows client (download) and the now free Android app (download). Mac, iOS, and Blackberry are all on deck.

While the idea of free is nice, as we all know, nothing ever truly comes without a cost. In this case, these new releases are ad-supported, which is not a big deal, but a cost nonetheless. Some may find the in-chat offers annoying, but overall, we found them rather inconspicuous. However, we did notice, the slyly placed offers during the Windows install, so unless you're into bloated toolbars, be sure to opt out of the Ask and eBay add-ons.

Trillian also offers a new Pro account for $12 a year, which gets you a completely ad-free experience and access to the pretty nifty online chat storage feature. Paid account holdovers from version 4 still get the ad-free experience, but will have to upgrade to Trillian 5 Pro to get the online chat storage. Paid mobile customers get the ad-free experience and free updates, but again, no online chat storage until they upgrade to the new Pro account.

In our opinion, ads or no ads, the major improvements and new continuous client feature are well worth the move to Trillian 5 for Windows. And for the Android mobile owners, there's not much to deliberate here--Trillian used to be $4.99 and now it's free.

SAN FRANCISCO--Somewhat later than had been planned last year, Google is addressing a significant weaknesses of Google Docs and Google Apps: the inability to use the services while not connected to the Net.

"We will make them [Google Docs offline apps] available this summer," said Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome, in an interview here last week at at the Google I/O conference. "We've all been using it internally. It's imminent. We want to make sure they're good."

It's not clear just how high the demand for the feature is. Although I find offline Google Docs' absence a critical weakness, Google cited low interest in the idea as one justification for why it had removed an earlier attempt at the technology in 2008.

One thing is very different from three years ago, though: Chrome OS, which in June will move from prototype to product with Chromebook models from Acer and Samsung.

With Chrome OS, Google is betting that the world is ready for a browser-based operating system. For office workers using a Chrome OS machine to enter customer data into a Web form, offline access is no big deal, but for Chromebooks to reach their full potential, they have to be able to handle a bit more of what even the lowest-end PC can do. That includes being useful when you're on a subway, on an airplane, or heaven forbid, in some primitive backwater that's not saturated with reliable 3G.

Google reassures people that offline Web apps are now possible to program thanks to a number of interfaces such as AppCache and IndexedDB arriving in browsers. But actually taking advantage of those interfaces isn't necessarily easy.

Google Docs was supposed to get offline abilities in early 2011, for example.

Offline Docs hasn't been easy, in part because of years of shifts in the plumbing used to let browsers look for data on a local computer rather than a remote server on the other side of the Internet.

Initially, Google Docs had some incomplete offline support through a Google technology called Gears. Google removed that support when it discontinued Gears in favor of open Web standards that accomplished similar goals. The technology in Gears for offline storage was a SQL database interface that was closely related to the Web SQL Database standard for browsers. However, Mozilla and Microsoft didn't like its approach, and Web SQL's standardization was derailed.

A final challenge for Google might be its own vision. The company is betting heavily on a future in which the Internet is built into the fabric of our lives. Indeed, with lobbying and investments in networking technology, it's trying to hasten the arrival of that future.

Google has perhaps a better idea of what that future looks like. Its campuses are bathed in Wi-Fi and peppered with Ethernet ports. Employees have home broadband, Net-connected shuttle buses, and for those moments in between, wireless data modems.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that Pichai said he must consciously remember to unplug from the Net if he wants to try offline features of Google Docs.

But for those of us not in the Google bubble, with spotty 3G and capped data for our smartphone and home broadband, offline support is essential.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

You've probably seen some of the video masterpieces filmmakers have created using nothing more than an iPhone. Of course, most of those clips, commercials, and shorts were shot with a single camera. Impressive as the results can be, aspiring videographers would no doubt appreciate the option of multiple cameras shooting at multiple angles.

CollabraCam is a potentially game-changing app that turns your iPhone into a multicamera control center, one that's linked in real-time to as many as four other iOS devices. This is better seen than described, so check out this info vid:

Cool, right? What's really amazing is that you can create your multicamera movie more or less on the fly, choosing the best shot from the available sources, putting camera operators on standby so they can frame the next angle, and editing your video in real-time.

Now for the bad news. CollabraCam requires a Wi-Fi network; it can't create an ad-hoc one among the various iDevices. Although that seemingly limits your ability to shoot "on location," you can use a mobile hot spot, a laptop-powered ad-hoc network, or any wireless router, as long as it has power. (An actual Internet connection isn't necessary.)

The bigger bummer is that CollabraCam can't record at 720p; its maximum resolution is a mere 640x480 pixels. Thus, your movies won't be nearly as sharp as they could be. I'm assuming this is a bandwidth limitation, but I'm also hoping developer Apptopus will find a way to support HD recording.

With a price tag of just $5.99, CollabraCam could be a serious boon to filmmakers on a shoestring budget (read: all filmmakers). I'll be checking it out the moment I can lay hands on a second camera-equipped iOS device. (Curse my cameraless iPad 1!)

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

Hot on the heels of its iOS counterpart, online backup service Mozy just released an app for Android. That's a major perk for anyone already using the service to archive their data.

Mozy, of course, is the quiet desktop tool that automatically copies your critical files to the cloud. I've been a user for years, and just this week I had to take advantage of it after a sudden system failure. Worked like a charm.

The app, which is free, enables you to access your files on the run. You can, for example, retrieve Word and Excel documents, view photos, and even play MP3s and certain kinds of videos.

Mozy also lets you share files via e-mail, or download them directly to your phone or tablet. (To access these options, you simply tap and hold any file. Unfortunately, you can't do likewise with folders.)

Mozy for Android is virtually identical in form and function to Mozy for iPhone, so I recommend reading Lance Whitney's coverage of the latter if you want to learn more.

I do share his opinion that navigation could be better; drilling down through a folder structure is a less-than-ideal way to find the file(s) you want. At least there's a search option. (Lance noted that it didn't work with entire data sets, only individual folders, but in my tests that wasn't the case: you can indeed search from the top level.)

If you're already using a service like Dropbox or SugarSync to access files on the go, I'm not sure there's much point in switching to Mozy. But if you're a Mozy user, it's a no-brainer: grab this app. (If you're not a Mozy user, I can't recommend it highly enough--especially the free 2GB MozyHome account.)

Originally posted at Android Atlas

TuneWiki was already a favorite music player for Android, mainly for its timed, subtitled lyrics (available translated into more than 40 languages), displayed while keeping the album art on screen and not navigating away from the player controls. The application got a major update today, getting a new interface and enhanced social-networking and music-discovery features.

The interface is now broken into three sections: My Music, Discover, and Connected. My Music is exactly what it sounds like, the music living on your device. Discover houses all the social-networking options. Tapping the Map button, for example, brings up a Song Map to see what people near you or around the world are listening to with TuneWiki. Find someone with similar tastes and you can choose to follow them, making them a Muse. You can also add people from your Facebook and Twitter networks as Muses. Whatever a Muse listens to ends up in your Songbox where you're able to preview and purchase tracks. You can also discover more music from an artist by seeing the songs you own as well as those you don't, with the option to immediately sample, buy, or watch a music video for those songs.

The last section, Connected, is for accessing streaming radio apps such as Shoutcast, music videos, on-demand services like Rhapsody and TuneWiki's Lyric Legend game, which requires you to tap word-filled orbs in time with a song. There's lyric support for streaming audio and video, too.

TuneWiki also announced a beta version of a desktop application that provides synchronized lyrics and can sync music in a desktop library with a mobile device (though I couldn't find the download or information about it on TuneWiki's site).

TuneWiki Social Music Player for Android is available for free with ads or $4.99 without.

Originally posted at Android Atlas