IRC Hacks

Rating:
Summary: A good book for IRC bot developers
Review: 'IRC Hacks' is not a more recent version of Alex Charalabidis's 'The Book of IRC.' Published by No Starch Press in 2000, 'The Book of IRC' focuses on more introductory material, and thoroughly covers the issues facing most IRC users. Unlike the older No Starch book, 'IRC Hacks' devotes over 200 pages to bot development. In other words, the 'IRC Hacks' authors concentrate on more advanced ways to interact with IRC servers. If this is your primary interest, you will enjoy 'IRC Hacks.'

Since I am not interested in bot development, 'IRC Hacks' wasn't as useful to me as I had hoped. I enjoyed on chapters discussing the IRC protocol (ch. 13) and setting up an IRC server (ch. 15). Hacks about NickServ (#8) and ChanServ (#9) were interesting, and I may try the CtrlProxy hack (#93) to facilitate remote IRC access.

'IRC Hacks' is fairly well written, although the editor should have ensured that terms were explained when first mentioned. For example, CTCP appears on pages 10 and 48, with no expansion of the acronym or reference to hack #85 (which explains CTCP). This is often a problem with books by teams of contributors. I would have enjoyed more coverage of 'operational issues,' like problems associated with running an IRC server. IRC networks have been targets of denial of service attacks and other adversarial activity for years, and the means by which IRC operators defend themselves would make good reading.

If you need a book focused on bot development, give 'IRC Hacks' a try. If you're more interested in IRC as a user, or even as an operator, ask Alex Charalabidis to write a second edition of 'The Book of IRC.'

Rating:
Summary: New ways of "playing" on IRC
Review: As a self-confessed IRC addict, I eagerly awaited the release of this book, and I was not disappointed. While there are text files all over the 'Net that explain how to do various things with IRC (scripts and so forth), this book like the other "Hacks" books goes a little bit deeper. While the first two chapters deal with "introductory" items like how to connect from various operating systems, common terms and registering with NickServ (a widely available IRC service), the subsequent chapters get more into specialized topics, like searching through various networks to find a specific channel, or enhancing an IRC client. And yes, there are lots of hacks about writing bots, whether it's to protect a channel from unauthorized takeovers, or logging IRC activities, for searching or querying, even trivia and announcement bots.

This is a book ideally suited to IRC channel ops and admins and offers a lot of ways to make being on IRC much more fun and (in some cases) safer. There's definitely enough here to keep an IRC user and/or op/admin busy for hours and hours.

Rating:
Summary: Social networking on IRC?!
Review: Four years before the Web burst onto the scene with Mosaic, there was IRC. At first, IRC was mostly for bulletin board users. But as the Web took off, it also greatly expanded the pool of users and the extent of the Internet's physical reach. Now Mutton shows how today's IRC has so much more than that 1988 version. Being able to format messages, or colour them. Hey, you can even send and get sounds, in various common sound formats like wav files.

Numerous of his hacks revolve around managing an IRC channel. Problems of success, really. As IRC usage soared, what were once small communities of shared interests and values now often have to contend with others with different values. Channel operators may want to check out what Mutton offers.

Perhaps the most intriguing hack concerns finding social networks from many channels. Neat possibilities. Social networks are quite hot these days, though no one has yet found a viable business model centred on them.

Rating:
Summary: Author is very biased about his articles
Review: I have just read an article on slashdot on how the author has "analysed" IRC networks and concluded 99.9% of the traffic from the top 60 channels is illegal. What I wonder is, the top 60 channels all belong to warez groups and have nothing to do with the countless legit constructive channels around. Its like generalizing the internet to one particular field like pornography or illegal file-sharing.

Overall, I think this author is unqualified to write without bias and wouldn't recommend his work to others. Sincerity begets appreciation and this author deserves none.

Rating:
Summary: 100 Useful Hints and Tips
Review: Like all of the O'Reilly Hack books, this one contains 100 quick and dirty hints, tips and suggestions you might try on the IRC network. Although I consider myself an expert in some of the areas in which they have done their Hacks books, I have never failed to find a few things that fit exactly with something that I needed to do. In fact, I find that I need to go re-read the books once in a while just to see what new ideas I can find.

This particular book is interesting in that it is suitable for both the beginning and sophisticated user. It starts with getting an IRC client, using it, modifying it - in general getting the most out of it. Then it goes on to writing IRC bots using Perl, Java and Python along with canned libraries that simplify the writing of autonomous agents.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating uses for IRC
Review: This book opens up a whole new dimension of functionality for instant messaging. There are about fifty recipes dedicated specifically to helping you get automated access to information through IRC. Most of the examples are in Java, but there is some Perl and Python as well.

As Hacks books go this is a little looser than the others. I would have liked less time spent on the user interface twiddling, and I'm not sure what the artificial intelligence hack was about. But overall the book is great.

For anyone who loves instant messaging and wants to allow access to their applications through IM, this is the book. If you are a hardcore IRC user you will also want to have a look at this book.