Introduction: Hacks #64-67

IRC bots are ideal for making announcements. They can happily sit there and wait for an event to happen without getting bored. Furthermore, when a bot makes an announcement, it will never get involved in the subsequent debate that ensues.

The first hack in this chapter shows you how to make a simple bot that welcomes users to your channel. The hacks steadily become more complex, showing you how to announce the appearance of new newsgroup posts and news items found in RSS feeds. The final hack shows you how to use MatchEd to monitor the progress of multiplayer first-person action games from the comfort of IRC.

Beyond the hacks in this chapter, we hope that your imagination can lead you to create your own unique hacks, such as a bot that notifies you when you're low on hard disk space or when it's time to go and watch your favorite TV program.