A system is provided for pro-actively suggesting communication features to
users, comprising a tuple space for facilitating collaboration among
software agents, a plurality of device agents for controlling operation
of associated communication devices for respective ones of the users, and
a plurality of user agents representing a plurality of users, each of the
user agents (i) facilitating creation, by a user desirous of
communicating, of groups of users to be communicated with, (ii) poking
tuples to the tuple space indicative of each user's availability for
communication; (iii) peeking anti-tuples to the tuple space for eliciting
communication availability of respective ones of the users in the groups
of users to be communicated with and in response causing associated
device agents to display via respective ones of the devices the
aforementioned availability to the user desirous of communicating, and to
effect communication between the user desirous of communicating and a
selected one of the respective users who is indicated as being available
for communication.