I've used the IRC for at least 10 years, if not more, and I've utilized a range of clients starting with the stalwart mIRC for Windows. When I migrated my home system to a Mac, the IRC client of choice quickly became the open-source Colloquy. It was simple to use and easy to integrate scripting via AppleScript. I could easily join chat rooms across multiple servers

So, it should be no surprise that Mobile Colloquy [link opens iTunes] shares many of the same features as its desktop kin. We first saw Mobile Colloquy back in 2007 when it was made available via the Installer.app and it very much the same on the surface as its jailbroken predecessor. It's taken the promise shown back then and has turned into an excellent and stable release that's now available through the App Store.

One of the unique features is a built-in browser that will open links transmitted in a chat room or private message. The some of the pages opened through the link are not iPhone-optimized version, but the regular Web sites. I accessed the optimized versions of CNN and Google just fine through the built-in browser, but TUAW came up as the normal site.

The button on the bottom right of the browser will take you into Mobile Safari. There is no bookmark tool, you'll go into Safari to take care of that. The "Done" button closes out the built-in browser and returns you back to your chat. It's a very nice feature, but I wish you could bookmark links without having to open the same web page again in Safari - something that could be extremely tedious over the EDGE network. Another drawback is when you do choose to go into Safari, you will be knocked off the servers you were logged into. Give the client a few seconds for the servers to reconnect, then tap the name of the chat room you were in. You will get a prompt asking you if you want to rejoin it.

Another very nice feature is completion pop-ups for basic IRC commands, including user names of other people in the chat room. You can also use specialized commands, such as /google query and /wikipedia query, which will bring up results in the built-in browser. All chat rooms and private messages are gathered under one screen. You can set specific words to be highlighted and turn on an optional vibration when the word is used, such as your nickname. Colloquy can be used either in portrait or landscape mode as well.

Mobile Colloquy is available in the App Store for $1.99, and it's well worth the money.

A new President, free software, and a look at an IRC client you probably haven't used yet -- what more could you ask for? Snak is giving out their IRC client today (and there's only a little bit of time left in the day, sorry about that) for free to celebrate the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States. Whether you support that choice or not, no one would vote against free software, right? Go check it out, enjoy the free download (to get a license, you've got to drop an email note to Obama2008 AT snak.com), and leave the Obama drama for your mama.

Personally Colloquy does pretty much everything I'll ever need in an IRC client, and it's already free (although they do appreciate donations if you enjoy the 'ware). But Snak looks like it's got some cool features too, including an "Mp3 list" for... erm... backup downloading, and an "address book" for all your IRC friends. Seems worth trying out, and today at least, you can't beat the price.

Thanks, Alex D!

Linkinus is the preferred IRC client for a lot of our readers, I know (personally I tend towards Colloquy, but only because I'm a cheapskate and it's donationware), and they kindly dropped us a note to let us know they'd updated to version 1.3. The new build includes the ability to split chat windows (as seen above), in addition to a revamped UI, "major" performance upgrades, plaintext and Spotlight support for logging, and a whole slew of fun things to play around with, including, we're told, a "Whisper" style that will actually embed images, audio files, and YouTube and Google videos right into your chat windows (a la Campfire). Apparently IRC isn't just text anymore.

In fact, at $20 for all these features, Linkinus really is a steal for anyone who spends any amount of time in an IRC channel. Colloquy still does everything I need it to when I jump into IRC periodically, but if you want to chat like a pro in there, Linkinus is a great choice.

iPhone hacker eok writes to let me know that he and Samuel have gotten SIP registration and signalization working. They took a few mobile terminal shots, but the real work is being done via ssh. Samuel is working on connecting the audio in/out to the pjSIP. If you have iPhone or iPod touch coding skills and want to get involved in the project, connect to #touchmods on irc.undernet.org. It looks like most of the work will be done on European time.

Oh, and if anyone is giving away free iPods to worthy developers? eok recommends that Samuel gets one first. He writes that Samuel has been the driving force behind the compilation.

IRC fans rejoice. Leopard's iChat 4 introduces IRC-style /me actions. Just enter /me followed by an action and iChat will properly attribute that action to you in the chat window. The action appears outside the "bubbles" in a central text. iChat does not yet support /describe but /me is a great place to start and shows Apple's ever expanding attention to non-AIM standards and capabilities.

/me approves.

A new IRC client debuted on the iPhone today and is available for download from Installer.app. Like many other iPhone projects, Mobile Colloquy is still in its early days, taking baby alpha release steps, but it shows excellent promise. It allows you to create server profiles, enter your user information and, of course, connect to those servers and chat.

Although Mobile Colloquy uses the same core as Mac OS X Colloquy, the two projects are not affiliated. For any issues with Mobile Colloquy, the developers request that you please file reports at the Mobile Colloquy Google Code site and not at colloquy.info.

Big news today on the iPhone development front. This morning brings the release of both a native instant messaging client and a native IRC client.

Apollo IM just entered Version Negative 1, an early beta release. It is available as well via Installer.app. Apollo IM has been developed by "Arminius" and offers iPhone-native instant messaging capabilities. Future releases will support file transfer as well as MSN/Yahoo/Jabber/Gtalk support.

"Pogi"'s iRCm provides a GUI-based Internet Relay Chat client for your iPhone. You can join channels, issue raw IRC commands and take part in conversations. iRCm is available for download at Google Code, and packages have been loaded for both Installer.app and PXL.

Both applications have been developed with Shimmer/PXL, the iPhone auto-updates library. Shimmer allows iPhone code to "call home" and update themselves when new versions become available. Both developers are looking for feedback and plan to use this update feature to allow the program to keep growing via its installed base.

If you're interested in developing for either application, pop over to Google Code and download the latest SVN. Both projects offer a great opportunity to get involved in open source.

Thanks to Dylan Kenney

Hot on the heels of the Apple IIe-into-a-Linux-terminal tutorial we posted the other day, here's another mix of retro and modern-- Byte Cellar has hooked up an old Apple IIc (or //c if you spin that way) to work as a terminal to a Mac Mini. It's pretty neat-- sounds like they frankensteined the IIc's serial port to a USB connection, put ModemMGR on the IIc (which is three whole floppies), and now are using the old "luggable" as an IRC client, which is a perfect use for it, and, as Blake says, makes it feel "great to twiddle the //c's keys in a meaningful way every workday."

There's also a photo gallery of the whole setup, which shows the spliced cable, as well as the whole setup in all its glory (yeah the XP box mars it a bit, but no one's perfect). Very cool. Makes me wish I still had one of those old clunky Apple IIs, if only to run IRC as it's mean to be run-- with nothing but green text on a black screen.

[via Digg]

Gear Live has a nice tutorial for getting IRC up on the iPhone. You'll need Colloquy, this plugin, and about 10 seconds to spend with Terminal. Once you're done with setup, launch (or relaunch) Colloquy and point your iPhone's browser to http://YourIP:6667. Visual learners may want to check out the walk-through gallery.

Enter the password you set up in the previous step and you're all set! The UI is clean and readable. I've tried it and it worked great.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is the grand-daddy of all instant messaging protocols. My modest IRC needs have traditionally been satisfied by the nice donationware application Colloquy, but reader Jago writes in to tell us about a new OS X IRC client: Linkinus. The three-column interface appears attractive and is probably worth a look-see for the heavy IRC user.

Linkinus is $19.95 and a demo is available.

Backchannel, noun
The practice of using networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside live spoken remarks.

In other words, a backchannel is a conference specific chat-room which provides a virtual round-table at which conference attendees can chat and make snarky comments. In my experience, the backchannel is often one of the most enjoyable parts of any given tech conference. Additionally, for those unable to attend a conference, the backchannel provides a digital analogue to actually being there which allows users to get a feel for whats going on, even if thousands of miles away.

For this year's Macworld, Chris Forsythe of Adium and Perian fame has set up a dedicated IRC backchannel on the freenode network. Whether you're here at the conference, or stuck at home at your computer, I invite you to open up your IRC client of choice and join the conversation.

/server irc.freenode.org
/join #mwsf2007