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Trillian Astra has finally, officially replaced Trillian 3. Users who experienced the Astra beta will find the final version to be similar, with the biggest change being the features that are limited to the paid Pro version. If you're new to Trillian Astra, this update makes the multi-protocol chat client competitive again.

The differences between the two versions are enumerated here; the short of it is that the extras are nice--but they're merely extras. You'll still get the improved performance, and support for mainstream services like Yahoo, AOL, Google, and ICQ. MySpaceIM is supported, and Skype is included, but it requires the program to be running before it can be accessed through Astra--just as Skype does with other multichat applications. It includes POP3 and IMAP account notifications rolled in alongside the Facebook and Web mail notices.

Perhaps most importantly, the Cerulean Studios team promises that Trillian Astra will be updated more frequently than Trillian 3 ever was, with regular maintenance patches.

Editor's note: There is a bug currently on the Download.com product page that indicates that the program is only available to buy. This is being worked on and should be fixed Monday. The program can be downloaded for free.

Trillian Astra, which has been in development for nearly three years, is now available to users as a public beta. You won't need to register for a private key to download it, although if you've been using it since we reported on the Astra beta in April, it might be time for an upgrade.

In announcing on the Trillian blog Tuesday that the beta is now public, Cerulean Studios also said the latest build of the multi-protocol chat client fixes bugs related to server-based problems. The company clearly has confidence in the beta, though, since they've made it the featured product on their download page. Users can still grab Trillian 3.1, the latest stable build, but only from a link off to the side.

On the Trillian download page, you can also see that Cerulean Studios has plans for Mac, iPhone, and Web-based clients. So far, none of those versions is available for public testing.

Article updated at 8:30 a.m. PT with a correction about Trillian Astra's highlighting capabilities and more opinions.

Leaning on the simple journalistic knowledge that one's impression of a product changes after a week of constant use, I attempted to empty my head of first-impression snap judgments and give Trillian's Astra (screenshots), now in (seemingly open) private beta a fair, unprejudiced shot as my primary chat application. Ten days later I like the free, multinetwork instant messenger better than I did in the first few hours after downloading it.

This more congenial view could be the result of giving the app's features a chance to permeate and charm. It could also be that the thorns and snarls I first cursed have blunted as they became normalized as a result of continued use. It's somewhere between these poles that my real attitude and recommendation resides. From an IM standpoint, Astra beta lacks Yahoo Messenger 9's visual luster. Yes, I know, Yahoo's IM has the distinct advantage of being a full-fledged application and not a private beta, but then again, Cerulean Studios has had three years to focus on design. However, there's nothing terribly offensive about Astra, either, and it does have that invaluable ability to contact friends on a wide variety of IM networks going for it.

Here's what's good

1. Themes: Within Astra's simpler, cleaner Cobalt skin and the three-dimensional Cordonata is a range of colorful themes. When clicking the View navigation in the default Cordonata, around 40 themes show up, ranging from lime to esoteric colors like "Toxic," "Cupcake," and "Chameleon" (they should really come with preview pics or a color palate). In that first crucial half hour of discovery, the toasted-brown "Honey" theme kept me from ditching the program altogether.

2. Notifications and replies: It's up to you which action triggers a notification window in the bottom right of your screen, but during a chat conversation, seeing your buddy's entries can help you decide the urgency level of your response. Even better is the shortcut "reply" button that takes you to the chat window, and the "Quick Reply" that lets you respond right in the window. (Best yet would be if Astra followed Digsby's lead--see below--and enabled direct replies from the notification window without reopening the chat window by default. In other words, if it made the Quick Reply button the automatic behavior.)

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Editors' note: At 2:30 p.m., April 14, we added information about the Instant Lookup feature and other in-chat features. Updated information can be found at the bottom of the post.

The first of the multiprotocol chat clients, Trillian got its start nine years ago and had been updated with some regularity through 2005 and 2006. It was included in the Google Pack, a collection of freeware that Google was supporting. On the heels of Trillian 3.1, Cerulean Studios announced that Trillian 4, code-named Astra, was in development, and would finally port the service to Mac and Linux.

Except for the occasional minor announcement, that was the last big news about Trillian. Competition from more frequently updated services like Pidgin, Digsby, and Adium has drawn away fans, but now there's a private beta of Astra that seems to be accepting invitation requests from everybody who wants one. You can sign up for the Astra beta here--let us know if you don't get an invite, because it seems that Cerulean is taking all comers.

Back when it was announced, Astra sounded great. Support for even more chat protocols, better encryption protection, and a downloadable contact list were just a few of the tantalizing features. Facebook integration was added to the list, eventually, but by that time, many users had moved on. Astra, as it stands now, is good at what it does--but the competition has caught up.

It does everything that it should do at this point. It services multiple chat protocol, including mainstream services like Yahoo, AOL, Google, and ICQ. MySpaceIM is supported, and Skype is included, but it requires the program to be running before it can be accessed through Astra--just as Skype does with other multichat applications. It includes POP3 and IMAP account notifications rolled in alongside the Facebook and Web mail notices.

There are other useful tweaks and changes. By default, a pop-up window will appear when you receive a chat. Click on it once and you'll see two options, one for a standard Reply and the other for a Quick Reply. The Quick Reply will open a text field in the pop-up that you can write your response in, while hitting Reply will bring up the main chat window. Video chat and Webcam support are supported by default, and three view modes are available for changing up your chat window appearance.

Astra is extensible, and impressively only crashed once, when I was jumping from a Gmail notification to the actual mail message. When you install though, don't just cruise through the process on auto-pilot or you'll wind up with the Weather Channel toolbar and the Ask.com toolbar. Two other problems stuck out: the news ticker that appears at the top of the chat window can't be removed or even configured to run headlines that are useful to you, and the search function in the Options menu doesn't work. This makes it difficult to navigate through the overhaul, since many features have changed in the update.

It feels faster and smoother than previous versions of Trillian, but that's the least it should be, considering when its last update happened. The Astra skin feels slick and modern, but it can be a bit irritating at first as important features blend into the background because of a lack of contrasting colors. Overall, the experience feels smoother than I remember Trillian being, although I probably haven't touched it in about two years.

Trillian Astra is a good chat client, and it doesn't suffer from a "too little, too late" syndrome. This is a solid, modern multichat client. The question that won't be answered until it finally comes out, though, is whether anyone still cares.

Update: What I referred to above as the news ticker, Trillian calls the "Instant Lookup." It's accessible in Preferences under the Chat option. Users can configure which feeds or Instant Lookups appear, although that's not readily apparent. Click on an item to modify it and an X will appear on the right side. Click the X to remove the item, and remove all of them to remove the news ticker completely. You can add RSS feeds or "lookup" services using the buttons at the bottom of the window, but overall it's not an intuitive process. The X's could appear by default, for example, or there could be mouse-over instructions.

There's also a default feature that I neglected to point out that underlines in certain words green. Mouse over the word or phrase and the Wikipedia definitions will appear. Click on one of those words and a menu appears from which you can Copy the definition to the clipboard, Search for the term on the Web, or View the Wikipedia entry by loading the Wikipedia page. While the first and third options worked flawlessly, the Search feature took me to the Cerulean Studios Web page and tried to download an app without an extension.

I stand by my initial analysis of Astra's new features that while they're useful, they're hard to configure and some are still buggy or nonfunctional.

My favorite IM application, Trillian, has just put out a brand new build of its upcoming Astra product for alpha testers. New are Facebook notifications and quick shortcuts to jump straight to things like photo galleries and user profiles. Sorely missing from that, however, is Facebook's chat, which is what I think many Trillian users have been pining for (myself included). Free competitor Digsby has had Facebook chat integration since the beginning of May, shortly after the service was launched.

Scott Werndorfer, co-founder and head developer of Trillian, tells me his team is waiting on proper XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) integration with Facebook chat to be finished, something that might be announced at next week's F8 event after originally being promised in mid-May. Until then developers have had to cobble together their own solutions that require the use of your browser--something nobody wants to deal with with their desktop chat application.

The good news is that the new build brings with it support for IRC--the chat medium that has proven to be invaluable for things like live blogging and customer care chat in enterprise businesses. Trillian has full support for administrative controls and server surfing. You can also encrypt the contents of your chat room in case you're sharing personal or business information--something AIM and many others don't provide.

Trillian Astra is currently in private alpha, meaning you'll have to sign up to be a tester to give it a spin. You can find the sign-up page here.

Spring is an exciting time for tech. A slew of products that have been hibernating in development cocoons are ready to emerge just in time for the flora to wake up, the the sun to turn on (at least here in the northern hemisphere,) and for techies to regain that bounce in their step. Here are eight downloads and Web applications we expect to see frolicking across computer screens this spring.

But why stop there? CNET editors have also slaved to bring you details galore on the season's top gadgets. Check out the latest in cameras, phones, laptops, and gaming gear here.

It's hard to predict the next Twitter or Facebook, and that's what makes massive overnight, now-we're-worth-fifteen-billion-dollars success (or not) so gosh darn breathtaking. I mean, did Facebook know it was going to be Facebook?!

So my point is, we go on what we've got when predicting which software is going to turn heads. This list has been compiled partly by educated guesswork and partly by whimsy. Chances are, the software that ends up meaning something to people, we've never seen coming. It's probably not even a glimmer in its developer's eye.

If I turn out to be wildly off-base in my predictions, even better. Groaning at gross miscalculations from tech's crystal ball is part of what makes making them so much fun. Without further ado, here's the lineup.

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If you're a Trillian Astra alpha tester, the newest build launched this weekend now has a clean and simple profile building tool. You can add a slew of Web services to your personal profile for others to see, including Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Last.fm, and even your LinkedIn account. There are 13 in all, along with quick links to add your blog or personal Web site. The result is effectively a pretty looking link dump to all your online personas and services that others will see when they look at your profile. More importantly, however, it's the beginning of some integration with other Web services that could help differentiate Trillian from emerging Web competitors like Meebo. Whether they plan to take it as far as Flock has with its latest release is anyone's guess.

The new feature reminds me a little bit of AirTalkr, which we took a look at last month. That service employs a similar idea, although it will actually go through the effort of searching for matches by name and e-mail address on various services, taking a step away from the end user. It's something I hope Trillian borrows.

Trillian Astra is still in private alpha, with no word yet on an eventual release date, although if you're a paying pro member of version 3, you can get into the beta by signing up on the alpha sign-up page. In the meantime, since our last coverage, the service has added an auto-updater, a plug-in for MySpace's IM protocol, and launched the iPhone and Web versions of its client.

This nearly slipped by our radar last week, but in the latest build of the upcoming chat client Trillian Astra, Cerulean Studios has snuck in desktop versions of its widgets. Users can now place widgets in their Trillian buddy list or right on their desktop, similar to what you'd get with the Yahoo Widget engine, or other desktop widget tools. Users are also able to send them between the buddy list and desktop via right clicking, or they can simply drag and drop.

For now there are just five sample widgets, but assuming Cerulean Studios opens things up a bit, or goes with universal widget coding, Trillian users could get what is typically two applications in one, along with a wide array of desktop widgets.

Customizing the widgets is a little harder than it should be, as you can't just configure each one once it's on your desktop. Everything is handled through a preferences menu, although I'm assuming this will be changed as the application gets closer to release. Some sample widgets do look neat; the weather widget in particular is easy to read and fully animated. And the world-time widget shows when the sun is hitting your current location, which is totally nerd eye-candy.

Similar to other widget tools, Astra has a hot key that let users pull up all the running widgets at the same time. Pressing the Windows key and space bar accomplishes this easily, although it doesn't have nearly the same effect you get with OS X's Dashboard widget.

I wouldn't recommend you ditch your current widget engine just yet, since this is a brand-new feature on an application that's still in private alpha. I am, however, excited to see if this feature will be integrated into the forthcoming browser-free version of the app.

For more shots of the new widget runtime environment, keep reading.

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