I use znc running on a slice. (http://en.znc.in/wiki/ZNC)
I've also heard of Bip (http://bip.t1r.net/), but I've never used it.
I've also heard of Bip (http://bip.t1r.net/), but I've never used it.
I run znc on a small VPS instance that is always running, always up, so I don't have to worry about keeping my connection to an IRC server open. ZNC (the bouncer) keeps me logged in to the IRC server, and I connect to ZNC when I need to be in contact with others.