[ Thanks to abhishek for this link.
]
“Bitlbee is a chat system gateway that allows you to connect to
several other instant messaging services via a regular IRC client.
This offers the advantage that you can manage accounts on chat
networks like Jabber, MSN, Yahoo, and AIM/ICQ, all in your
favourite IRC client to leverage its own features. In this article
we will see how Bitlbee works, and get started with setting up an
account on a public server.“A Bitlbee server acts as an intermediate between your IRC
client and the intsant messaging network. It essentially appears as
an ordinary server to IRC clients…”