Khaled Mardam-Bey

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Khaled Mardam- Bey

Khaled Mardam-Bey (Arabic: خالد مردم بك‎) (born March 19, 1968) is the creator of mIRC, a popular IRC client for Windows.

He was born in Amman, Jordan, to a Syrian father and a Palestinian mother, and currently resides in London, England.

[edit] Private life

At his personal homepage he reveals that before developing mIRC he was studying for a Master's Degree in Cognitive Science at an unspecified university - believed^{[citation needed]} to be the University of Westminster (formerly The Polytechnic of Central London). He says he had just started to work on his thesis when he decided to write a small IRC client. It became popular and in a similar fashion to Bill Gates, he gave up his studies and committed himself to his work on mIRC.

He is a vegetarian and enjoys chess and reading. He also has a high interest in Palestinian poetry, Artificial Intelligence and the political disputes involving Palestine and gives his solution for this on his website. Khaled chooses to keep his personal life private and he doesn't like to give interviews.

[edit] mIRC

Khaled decided to create mIRC because he found the first IRC client for Windows, WinIRC, lacked some basic IRC features. Then he continued developing it due to the challenge and the fact that people appreciated his work. The subsequent popularity now allows him to make a living out of mIRC. It costs $20 to register it after the evaluation period. The design of mIRC represents Khaled's personal no-frills, minimalist point of view.

mIRC was last updated on November 23, 2006 with version 6.21. He states on his website that he is currently studying for a Master's Degree in Development and Environmental studies.