IRC is Internet Relay Chat. It's basically multiplayer notepad

No images, just text and commands. Can be good once you get to know it.
For anybody here that knows techie-talk, here's a link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat mIRC is the most commonly used program to access IRC channels.
If you have Mozilla Firefox (which you should have...), you can use
ChatZilla. I use CZ and it works for me
Any questions, feel free to post or PM me. Keep in mind I've never actually hosted a channel, and I wouldn't have a clue as how to set up a channel on a server, but I think all you need to do is get some IRC bots (Google a bit) and put them in the server.