Goofey is a program which provides many services by communicating with a central server Pluto. Services provided by goofey include remote user location, message sending, fortune provision, jargon file lookup and a timetable service.
You can give goofey a try right now (well, sort of). You can list me to see if I'm on, finger me and see my goofey finger information, or even send me a message.
If you already have a goofey account, then web goofey might be useful to you. It allows goofey access from any (frames capable) web browser.
You may want to read the goofey man page to find out more about what goofey can do.
Here is the goofey source which should build quite easily on most unix systems.
Goofey is the preferred mode of communciation of many people, as it combines the immediacy of talk(1) and the asyncronous nature of mail(1). That is, you will know if messages sent with goofey have been received by the recipient almost immediately. Goofey also provides facilies for users to supply finger type information, an 'away' message for when you are away, a 'quiet' message for when you are busy or away from the terminal, in fact just about everything that people have been put up a good case for being included in the server.
So, give it a try. It may already be on your path. Most machines around monash already have it installed somewhere useful.
Here are some stats on goofey usage.
The goofey source: goofey.c