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If you're into instant messaging in a big way, you'll probably want to take a look at the free Trillian chat app, which, like others, lets you IM with friends on multiple networks, like Yahoo, AOL, Windows Live, Google Talk, and so on.

On Thursday, Trillian-maker Cerulean studios announced two pieces of interesting information. If you're an iPhone user, hang in there or skip to the end.

First, the company is readying a beta version of its chat app for Android phones 1.6 and up. As with other Trillian apps, it will manage chatting through Yahoo, … Read more

On June 17, 1985, a media entrepreneur named John Hendricks took a chance on his dream, and launched what has become the largest nonfiction media company in the world, the Discovery Channel.

Amazingly, that means that the channel will turn 25 years old on Thursday, and several of the network's shows are celebrating the anniversary by running special episodes.

For "MythBusters," one of the network's top-rated shows, that meant the chance to put together an episode touting its five hosts' top 25 favorite moments. Since its debut, there have been 191 "MythBusters" episodes featuring … Read more

Cisco is debuting a trio of new and enhanced products that it believes will help people better collaborate and share content with each other, as more companies go virtual and more employees work remotely.

Announced on Friday, the company's new Quad, Prosumer Video, and updated WebEx Connect IM products each serve a specific niche, allowing business users to find and connect with the right people and share information within their organizations, said Cisco.

Cisco Quad is an enterprise collaboration tool that offers voice, video, and social networking in one application. Through Quad, people will be able to search their … Read more

While it's not hard to find a free chat app that lets you IM and call friends on multiple networks, getting one to elegantly inform you of incoming chats and let you easily switch among open conversations is slimmer pickings. It may not be the most visually exciting app we've seen, but Nimbuzz IM does a fine job delivering features and alerting you to chats when you talk with friends on Skype, Facebook, Windows Live Messenger (MSN), Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), MySpace, ICQ, or Gadu-Gadu.

The app will buzz by default when a new … Read more

A new instant messaging app is on its way to BlackBerry smartphones, and it's name is Trillian.

Trillian-maker Cerulean Studios announced work on its BlackBerry beta in May, adding one more operating system for the multinetwork IM app that's already well-known on Windows, Mac, and more recently, on iPhone. Although we expect to see Trillian launch into public beta for BlackBerry phones running OS 5.x, we got to try it out this week.

The app closely resembles the screens we saw from the closed beta (see slideshow below). Trillian lets you quickly sign into accounts from a start screen, and gets you chatting with friends on MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, MySpaceIM, Facebook Chat, Jabber/XMPP, and Google Talk.

The feature set is basic at this point--not so unusual for a beta app. It can display avatar images, add emoticons, and send photos that you either grab from the image gallery or take fresh with your phone's camera. The app alerts you to new instant messages with a flashing LED light or with pushed e-mail alerts when the app is closed.

Trillian beta is easy enough to use, but not very elegant at this stage. You control the app with the BlackBerry's Back arrow and menu key, but unlike competitors, Trillian doesn't utilize a lot of on-screen buttonry. For example, competitors like Beejive do a better job alerting you to new IMs and who sent them, and makes switching among conversations possible from within open chat windows. Instead of being able to switch among open chats with a menu item, Trillian has you arrowing back to the buddy list and navigating to the developing conversation.… Read more

If it isn't enough to chat with friends from Google, MySpace IM, Skype, and Facebook, as well as AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and IRC on Trillian't multinetwork IM app, you can comfortably count the app's deep hooks into Twitter and Facebook alerts and checking e-mail (both POP3 and IMAP varieties) as reasons for switching from your current messenger.

Among its best social networking traits, Trillian will automatically shorten URLs in your tweets, and handle direct messages, re-tweets, and replies. Twitter Trends can show up in your contact list, and you can get tweets to appear in tooltip … Read more

More than five years after its launch, World of Warcraft is still as popular as ever. These days it boasts more than 11.5 million users, many of whom are waiting eagerly for the game's third full expansion, Cataclysm, which is expected later this year.

It's not clear yet if the new version will match the impressive sales of its predecessor, Wrath of the Lich King, which sold 4 million copies in one month, but there's sure to be a rush of excitement when it does launch.

One thing that's clear, though, is that WoW fans … Read more

If you're reading this, there's a pretty good chance you've visited I Can Has Cheezburger, the Internet's foremost repository of LOLCats.

Then again, you might not even know what a LOLCat is. If so, here's a brief primer: At its simplest, it's a picture of a cat accompanied by a silly, misspelled caption. There might also--or instead--be a walrus and some variation of the phrase "mah bucket."

A few years ago, LOLCats began bouncing around the Internet and quickly became one of the fastest-growing online memes. In the earliest days, they might … Read more

"For the Win," the latest young-adult novel by science-fiction author, journalist, and copyright activist Cory Doctorow, hit the shelves Tuesday. The book is about the drama surrounding the unionization of virtual world "gold farmers," and is based on his hit short story, "Anda's Game."

Doctorow, who has held policy positions at both the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Creative Commons, is also an editor of the influential technology culture blog Boing Boing. Add his spot on the Wired magazine masthead and there are probably few, if any, people with more geek culture cred.

From his home in England, the Canadian-born Doctorow, a Hugo Award nominee, is one of the most prolific writers going, constantly turning out blog posts, magazine articles, novels, and everything in between. And he travels more in a year than most people will in a lifetime.

His Boing Boing posts can cover issues from the fact that there are now at least 13 open-source hardware companies making $1 million or more annually, to anything related to Net neutrality, to the current battle over the U.S. Federal Communications Committee's decision to give Hollywood permission to activate the so-called "Selective Output Control" technologies in consumers' set-top boxes.

Doctorow recently sat down for a "45 Minutes on IM" interview and discussed a range of topics such as a new-style approach to print-on-demand to gold farming, NAFTA, and quite a bit more.

Q: Welcome to the third installment of "45 Minutes on IM." I wanted to start by saying I love how your official bio has a one-sentence version, a one-paragraph version, and a much longer one. How did you decide to break it out like that? Doctorow: It was based on the requests I got from press and such--my publicist, magazines, Web sites, etc.--they'd all request one of the three. I found myself trimming the long bio to fit the other two lengths over and over again, so I just made a template that included all three. I try to make a template out of any text I type more than once. Though sometimes it takes me three or four reps before I go, 'Duh, make a template stupid!' I have a grand plan to put together a wiki-editable FAQ of all the questions I get asked in e-mail someday.

In the long version of your bio, you talk about the "audacious experiment in print-on-demand publishing" for your next book. What does that mean?… Read more