There are currently a wide range of AnyEvent utility modules in the work. Searching for AnyEvent on CPAN will show that there is AnyEvent::AIO for real asynchronous IO integrated with event loops. Also AnyEvent::BDB, AnyEvent::HTTPD and Net::IRC3 and Net::XMPP2 also have AnyEvent support. AnyEvent::Handle provides a more highlevel way of handling filehandles with AnyEvent, see this example:

use AnyEvent::Handle;
my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;

my $ae_fh =
    AnyEvent::Handle->new (
       fh => \*STDIN,
       on_eof => sub { $cv->broadcast }
    );

$ae_fh->push_read_line (sub {
   my ($ae_fh, $line) = @_;
   print "Got line [$line]\n";

   $ae_fh->push_read (sub {
      my ($ae_fh) = @_;
      print "Got additional data:[\n".$ae_fh->rbuf."]\n";
      
      if ($ae_fh->rbuf =~ s/^.*\bend\b//s) {
         print "'end' detected, stopping program\n";
         $cv->broadcast;
         return 1;
      }
      
      return 0;
   });
});

$cv->wait;
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(Note: See also the examples in the distribution of AnyEvent and it's POD docs.)

There are also utility functions for non-blocking socket creation planned for next releases of AnyEvent. And one day there will hopefully also a HTTP client module with AnyEvent support, perhaps someone would like to write it?