Internet Chat Relay for Blackberry

Okay, so I was reading the Ubuntu weekly newsletter the other day and an issue that I had always been keeping at the back of my mind popped up. There was a meeting to be held by Internet Relay Chat (IRC) at some date by ubuntu and there were people being invited to it. I have tried to use IRC before but all my efforts were met with stumbling blocks ranging from how to get started with IRC and when I actually logged on, what to do from there. At the time, now that I look retrospectively at it, I wasn't really interested in it. Which is different from how I feel about it now.

Anyway, to get to the actual story, after reading that article I grew a new interest in IRC and what I could do with it. The benefits of IRC are too numerous to be detailed here, I will let you know of my reasons for my interest in it. Firstly, to become an Ubuntu member (blogs.ubuntu-nl.org/dennis/2009/05/13/how-to-become-an-ubuntu-member-the-easy-way) you need to be in contact with some ubuntu users and contributors and the easiest way to do this is through IRC as you can do it anytime and registration isn't really necessary. Secondly, my need to contribute to Ubuntu in whatever way I can. To me the second reason is actually more significant. So I started my search for use on IRC.

Fortunately, a single Google search pointed me in the right direction, the ubuntu irc documentation (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InternetRelayChat) I read up and got some pretty important info, basically:

what irc is
the way I can get to be on the irc channels
possible irc clients
links to what channels are best for me
and most important of all, a Loco channel closest to me

Of course this got me all bubbly inside and I was ready to go. But I had a problem, I don't have immediate constant internet connectivity, not at the moment anyway. But, I have a Blackberry phone. And thus began another search for my new found interest. Fortunately for me (again) there is an Irc client for Java enabled mobile phones called 'Jmirc' and for us Blackberry users there is a Jmirc made specifically for the Blackberry (this is actually very necessary because the other types do not take the Blackberry Internet Service into account). So off I went to get 'Jmirc' (jmirc.sourceforge.net/index.html) and on that page there is the Blackberry .jad link as well.

Now, after downloading and installing it, the important parts of configuration begin. I am sure this differs for different carrier networks, but I hope you can tweak it to your own carrier's specifics. When you open Jmirc for the first time it you will notice that it already has a default setup for Dal.net, the providers of Jmirc (I think). The default settings are configured to allow the average user to connect immediately, but seeing as we are using the Blackberry, don't start connecting as yet. You need to tweak a little bit.

If the need to connect immediately overcomes you, my experience: My Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) does not use an APN (for my carrier) so when I tried connecting before any tweaking, it gave me an error '… invalid url'. In addition to this the default connection settings were not correct.
So after some Googling I realised I had to change my APN. To do this go to Options → Advanced Options → TCP/IP. When there, enable APN settings and insert your carriers' APN. The APN details for my carrier are as follows:

APN: internet
Username:blank
Password: blank

I inserted the APN in and saved. After this I went back to Jmirc, went to the menu and got into Advanced, I enabled 'Use socket pull' (this stops it from disconnecting immediately after connecting), I left the 'Character encoding as it was (on ISO-8859-1) and changed the 'Connection mode' to 'Blackberry'. I saved and went back to the main Jmirc interface.
After this the tweaking was done and I hit 'Connect' and I was in business. When you connect it gives a notification about Jmirc attemting to access a low level network, say 'yes' to that and it will connect to the dal.net's servers. And that's it

If you want to connect to the ubuntu channels, namely, ubuntu itself, the following details apply:

server: irc.freenode.net
server port: 8001
channel: #ubuntu

You can learn how to register your nick (nickmane) at freenode.net/faq.shtml#nicksetup.

NB: There were times that I got a lot of error messages and I almost gave up but I kept on trying to connect and it finally worked out. The key issues I noticed were the APN, the Connection mode and for me the Socket pull. As soon as these were set up the app worked.

Now I am online on the ubuntu irc channels almost everyday via my Blackberry. The above is my experience, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

I shall write again soon