Infobot facts for kids

Infobot is a special computer program, like a helpful robot, that works on chat systems called IRC. It was first created in 1995 by a person named Kevin Lenzo. This bot was designed to remember website addresses, also known as URLs. It would link these URLs to simple names. If someone needed a specific website, they could just ask the Infobot. The very first Infobot was even nicknamed 'url' because of this job!

Even though the original Infobot project is not actively updated anymore, many new versions have been made. These new versions, called "forks," often have extra cool features. For example, some can search the internet for information and share the results right in the chat.

How Infobots Work

Infobots learn and share information using something called "factoids." A factoid is like a small piece of information that connects a phrase to its meaning. The bot listens to the chat all the time. When it hears a question, it looks for a matching factoid in its memory.

For example, imagine someone types this in the chat:

 <someone> wikipedia is https://www.wikipedia.org/

The Infobot quietly remembers this new fact. Later, if someone asks:

 <someone> wikipedia?
 <infobot> somebody said wikipedia is https://www.wikipedia.org/

The Infobot then shares the information it learned.

Because Infobots are so good at remembering and sharing facts, many people who manage IRC chat channels use them. They can store important information, like channel rules, so new people joining the chat can easily get them from the bot.

Infobots can also be used for fun! They can give funny answers to certain questions. Sometimes, people set up Infobots to give a specific reply. For example, if you want the bot to say something funny instead of just "X is Y," you can use a special word like '<REPLY>':

 <someone> dumb bot is <REPLY>stupid human
 <someone> infobot: what's up?
 <infobot> huh?
 <someone> dumb bot
 <infobot> stupid human

This makes the bot respond with the funny phrase you taught it.

New Kinds of Infobots

Infobots that use the very first program code are not as common on IRC anymore. This is mainly because the original project stopped being updated. Newer Infobots have many more features. Most of these new features involve connecting to websites to get information.

For example, some Infobots have a "weather" tool. You can ask the bot for the weather in a certain city. The Infobot will then connect to a weather website and tell you the current weather conditions right in the chat. Infobots are also helpful for doing math, changing money from one currency to another, or finding definitions of words. They can do many things that you might otherwise need to open a website for.

One important new version of Infobot was called blootbot. In 2008, it was combined back with the original Infobot project. Now, the person who created blootbot, Tim Riker, helps keep the original Infobot program updated. This newer Infobot uses special databases like MySQL or SQLite to store all its factoids.