The IRC (Internet Relay Chat) protocol lets you program bots as automatic helpers. In this month's column, we let a bot log a session and store the results in a database.

With the GIMP image editing program, and a little help from Perl, you can enhance your digital photos and transform a modern image into a nostalgic turn-of-the-century shot.

One panel has a neat collection of applets and another has spectacular looks – but a combination of the two is rare. Now help draws nigh for the desktop: PerlPanel is extensible with do-it-yourself widgets.

To identify the geographic regions from which link spam originated, a database locates IP addresses and the Google Charts service puts them onto a world map.

Instead of souped up CPUs, simple programming tricks are often all it takes to speed up a program. Profilers can discover bottlenecks that need more TLC from the developer.

Instead of just monitoring incoming requests in your web server's logfile, a sound server makes them audible and lets you listen to the tune of users surfing the site.

Although a USB toy such as a polystyrene rocket launcher only includes a Windows CD, it works fine on Linux with a spot of reverse engineering. With libusb, this doesn't even require compiling a device driver – Perl controls the device from userspace.

Barcodes efficiently speed us through supermarket checkout lines, but the technology is also useful for totally different applications. An inexpensive barcode scanner can help you organize your private library, CD, or DVD collection.

If you have grown tired of manually correcting color-casted images (as described in last month's Perl column), you might appreciate a script that automates this procedure.

If you are a bargain hunter, you might enjoy this Perl script that monitors price developments at Amazon and alerts you if Amazon suddenly drops the prices on the products you have been watching.