Galago (software)

Last updated
Galago
Operating system Linux
Type Presence information framework
Website galago-project.org

Galago is a desktop presence information framework, designed to transmit presence information between programs. This gives the Linux desktop the ability to combine numerous sources of information about people and combine them in novel ways. This is an area of rapid progress in desktop computing. A simple example of the possibilities of such a framework is having a unified 'friends' list, which could conceivably include Twitter, Facebook, nearby computers on the wired or wireless network, your e-mail contacts, VoIP contacts, and any of your IM contacts. Increasingly, Internet services such as SIP voice over IP allow optional publication of your presence. This means that a wide number of channels of communication with a person become possible, and Galago will allow that choice to be available in one place.

In computer and telecommunications networks, presence information is a status indicator that conveys ability and willingness of a potential communication partner—for example a user—to communicate. A user's client provides presence information via a network connection to a presence service, which is stored in what constitutes his personal availability record and can be made available for distribution to other users to convey his availability for communication. Presence information has wide application in many communication services and is one of the innovations driving the popularity of instant messaging or recent implementations of voice over IP clients.

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Galago is desktop-neutral, and contains a set of widgets for GTK+, bindings for several scripting languages and test programs. Qt widgets are planned.


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