Infobot facts for kids

An Infobot is a special computer program called an IRC bot. It was first created in 1995 by Kevin Lenzo. This bot's main job was to remember website addresses, also known as URLs. It would connect these URLs with a simple, easy-to-remember name.

If someone needed a specific website address, they could just ask the bot. The very first Infobot was used in a chat room called #macintosh on the EFnet IRC network. Its nickname was 'url' because of its main purpose. Even though the original Infobot project isn't actively updated anymore, many copies, called forks, have been made. Some of these copies are still used today. Many of these newer versions have cool extra features. For example, some can search the internet for you and share the results right in the chat.

How Infobots Work

Infobots use a special way of storing information called "factoids." Think of a factoid as a simple piece of information. The bot remembers things by linking a phrase to its meaning. This meaning is usually a short, helpful sentence.

Learning New Things

The Infobot learns by listening to everything said in the chat. You can set it up to listen all the time or only sometimes. When it hears a statement, it saves it in its memory.

Here's an example of how it learns:

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

At this moment, the Infobot quietly remembers what was said.

Answering Questions

When the Infobot hears a question, it tries to find a matching factoid in its memory. If it finds one, it will share the information it remembered.

Here's how it answers:

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

Because Infobots can easily store and share information, many people who manage chat rooms use them. They might use an Infobot to store important things like the chat room rules. This way, they can quickly share the rules with new people joining the chat.

Fun with Infobots

Infobots are also often used just for fun! They can give funny answers to certain questions. To make an Infobot say something specific instead of just "X is Y," you can use a special word like '<REPLY>'.

Here’s an example of a funny reply:

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

Newer Infobot Projects

Infobots that use the original code are not as common on IRC anymore. This is mainly because the original project isn't updated. Newer Infobots have many more features. Most of these features involve connecting to websites.

Cool New Features

For example, some bots have a "weather" tool. Someone can ask the Infobot for the weather in a certain city. The Infobot will then connect to a weather website and tell you the current weather in the chat. Infobots are also great for doing calculations, changing money amounts (currency conversions), finding word definitions, and many other things. These tools save you from having to open a website yourself.

Blootbot and Its Return

A famous copy of the Infobot was called blootbot, made by Tim Riker. In 2008, blootbot was combined back with the original Infobot project. Tim Riker now helps keep the original Infobot code updated. This newer code uses special databases like MySQL, PGSQL, or SQLite to store all its factoids.