The web culture I’m investigating is Internet Relay Chat
also known as IRC. I found an IRC client
called mIRC and they have a 30 day free trial so I used that without having to
register/and pay $20. They have a site http://www.mirc.co.uk/index.html
which is often used seeing as there are over 150 million downloads. One thing I
noticed before downloading is that if you are unsure of how to successfully
download the client they provide a step-by-step guide. After downloading the
client I went back to their site and clicked on the learn about mIRC, here I learned
that you can communicate, play, or work with others on IRC networks around the
world, either in multi-user group (called channels) or in
one-to-one private discussions. After
doing more looking on the site I clicked on the help link … it took me to a
page where I found their getting started link upon clicking the getting started
button it took me to a page I was familiar with as I had previously seen it
without knowing so.
The sign-up or registration I couldn’t really tell you about
at this time due to taking the free trial to test the client out.
The help documentation I found is easily accessible as you
can get to the getting started on every page that I have visited so far. One
thing I liked about getting help is they have a help file and FAQs where you
can find out what exactly IRC and mIRC is and how it works which was quite
interesting. After reading further help FAQs I found out that it also tells you
what “local host name” means and various other terms used within the IRC
community. The help file even supplied
me with the information to join my own channel and invite people into my
channel.
After reading through most of the FAQs I also found that I I
would not be able to join a channel until I’m connected to a server. This at
first seemed weird to me but after following the getting started guide and finding
a server I connected just fine. All in all readying the getting started guide
helped me out and then reading the help file/FAQs I believe I can become a very
talented IRC user. One thing that was disappointing was that after looking for
various free versions on the client I soon realized that something that
provides help in an appropriate manner paying for a service and having your
client registered for a lifetime wasn’t such a terrible thing. Although I will
still be using the free trial until I feel that I’m ready to commit to paying
for a product I haven’t tested out fully.
I look forward to being part of this community!
Oh and I’d like to mention one more thing after looking
around I stumbled upon the news section of the mIRC website to find out that
they regularly update so new content is always being added or even older
content being perfected.
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