IRC-Junkie.org – IRC News

A nice visualization of a normal day on the “largest internet relay chat Network in the world” brings us meeb of QuakeNet:

He goes on to write that the video shows “one day of activity, 24 hours, midnight to midnight in UTC, on the QuakeNet IRC network summarised into a 12 minute data visualisation” and that “each dot represents a new user connecting to the network, there are some 400 new connections per minute on average in this visualisation”.

The data which the video was rendered of has been “collected strictly anonymously at a high level” by a network service that “already stores connection data in memory” meeb emphasizes.

Today, we’re proud to present you an interview conducted with QuakeNets Head of Public Relations Joe “meeb” Harris.

QuakeNet is the worlds largest IRC network and caters mostly – but not exclusively – to gamers.

Without further ado, below are the questions and answers:

First, please introduce yourselves to our readers!

Today, Quakenet.org has announced the release of their new web-based chat client:

“We’re pleased to announce that our brand new webchat client is now out of testing and live for public use. The webchat client is the best way to connect to QuakeNet from a web browser, and offers many many excellent features such as full integration with QuakeNet and our “Q” channel service bot.”

Of course, we decided to take it for a spin.

The client comes up with a nice and simple window:

Webchat Introductory Screen

I assume you know how the next part works

Obviously that was a lame attempt at an April Fool’s joke >:)

Naturally IRC-Junkie wasn’t the only one attempting:

InspIRCd announced The WOW Starts Now! The project would turn commercial with paid version ranging from Home Basic to Commercial. A free version named Basic would remain available. W00t explained: “It will continue to be available free for those of the world who cannot afford to pay for licencing. It includes an executable file built for redhat 5.1 on the 286 architecture with egcs 1.0 which may or may not work. YMMV.”

The QuakeNet IRC network did a major overhaul of its major channel service Q.

“As many of you have noticed we’ve just upgraded our main channel service, Q, to a new version,” meeb announced on the QuakeNet website.

The upgrade consists of a complete rewrite of the bot and includes all old functionality and adds some new ones. Channels who previously used L have been upgraded to the new Q as well.

Bot response messages to commands have been changed. IRC-Junkie tried to ask QuakeNet whether problems have risen with scripts depending on these messages but we have had no reply.