Vincent Danen recommends the command-line based Irssi client as an extensible and powerful tool for communicating with peers via IRC. He tells you how to set it up.

Top IT news for April 21, 2008, features stories about: Microsoft Surface, Windows XP Service Pack 3, the Internet hitting capacity in 2010, the state of Muni Wi-Fi, the baddest botnet yet, and much more.

April's survey consists of a total of 165,719,150 sites. There is an increase of 3.1 million sites more than last month, the bulk of them coming from the United States.

Aircell, a provider of airborne communications, will be rolling out their new in-flight broadband offering on domestic flights in the next couple of months. Aircell will cover the U.S., delivering mobile broadband service on an exclusive 3-MHz air-to-ground (ATG) frequency to communicate to and from aircraft.

You can't measure the lifespan of most Web sites in Dog Years. They usually don't last that long. On the other hand, TechRepublic just passed its 9th Birthday earlier this month and is closing in on its 10th Anniversary. Here's a brief recap of how TR got started and what we'll do as the big 1-0 gets closer.

Virginia became the first state to make Internet safety classes compulsory for public schools. These classes will be for all safety levels, and represents of several measures to protect young Web users.

The popular Internet meme, "Rick roll" is more than just an interesting moment in Internet history; it is potentially a sign of things to come, as it is capable of touching business in a whole new way.

A micromanager is bad enough, but his behavior can be even more infuriating when the technical merits of his demands make no sense and could even hurt on a strategic level.

There is a lack of documentaries on the technology industry, especially when you consider that there is so much great material for storytelling. The Discovery Channel is making a nice contribution with its new series, "Download: The True Story of the Internet."

During his VoiceCon Orlando 2008 keynote, Mike Rhodin, General Manager of IBM Lotus software, predicted five future trends that IBM believes "reshape the way businesses and workers communicate and collaborate." Bill Detwiler, TechRepublic's Head Technology Editor, offers his insights on which predictions are likely to come true and asks for your opinion.

In an astounding turn to events, foes turned friends as Comcast and BitTorrent announced their agreement to collaborate on bringing better traffic management to Internet connections. This includes treating BitTorrent applications the same way as other applications and targeting high bandwidth users in a protocol agnostic manner.

Collaborate with technical staff in remote offices using the Citrix GoToMeeting application.

Virtual private local area network services (VPLS) have long been in use by an organization needing prime-time availability for an international wide area network or metro area network. VPLS puts Ethernet connections in point-to-point, multipoint, or multi-point to multipoint configurations. This framework for a geographically dispersed or global organization is a welcome architecture. One of the other popular alternatives ...

At some point in the future you will be able arrive at work George Jetson-style. Your electric flying car will be streaming content to you from the new Semantic Web while your son in the backseat will be enjoying Duke Nukem Forever.

Research studies have shown that most computer professionals do not like to socialize and they like to work alone. That is not to say that they are not social. In fact, social interaction is a key factor to job satisfaction.  However, that social need is filled in many cases by online interaction with other computer professionals. Are you ...