Empathy is an instant messaging (IM) and voice over IP (VoIP) client which supports text, voice, video, file transfers, and inter-application communication over various IM protocols.

Empathy also provides a collection of re-usable graphical user interface widgets for developing instant messaging clients for the GNOME desktop. It is written as extension to the Telepathy framework, for connecting to different instant messaging networks with a unified user interface.

Empathy has been included in the GNOME desktop since version 2.24. In Ubuntu since release 9.10 (Karmic Koala) and Fedora since release 12 (Constantine), it has replaced Pidgin as their default messenger.

Empathy natively supports protocols, implemented in telepathy framework: XMPP (including configuration for Facebook IM, Google Talk, though Gizmo5, LiveJournal Talk, Nokia Ovi and other Jabber servers also supported), salut link-local XMPP for local network peer discovery, MSNP (to .NET Messenger Service as used by MSN Messenger or Windows Live Messenger), IRC and SIP. Additional protocols are supported with libpurple plug-in: OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/MobileMe), Bonjour (Apple's implementation of Zeroconf), MySpaceIM, QQ, MXit, Novell GroupWise, YMSG, Gadu-Gadu, Lotus Sametime, SIMPLE, SILC, Zephyr.

Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil (/ˈkɜrzwaɪl/ KURZ-wyl; born February 12, 1948) is an American author, inventor and futurist. Aside from futurology, he is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He is the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism.

Ray Kurzweil grew up in the New York City borough of Queens. He was born to secular Jewish parents who had escaped Austria just before the onset of World War II, and he was exposed via Unitarian Universalism to a diversity of religious faiths during his upbringing. His father was a musician and composer and his mother was a visual artist. His uncle, an engineer at Bell Labs, taught young Ray the basics of computer science. In his youth, he was an avid reader of science fiction literature. In 1963, at age fifteen, he wrote his first computer program. Later in high school he created a pattern-recognition software program that analyzed the works of classical composers, and then synthesized its own songs in similar styles. In 1965, he was invited to appear on the CBS television program I've Got a Secret, where he performed a piano piece that was composed by a computer he also had built. Later that year, he won first prize in the International Science Fair for the invention; he was also recognized by the Westinghouse Talent Search and was personally congratulated by President Lyndon B. Johnson during a White House ceremony.

Richard Niles is an American composer, arranger, producer, guitarist, broadcaster and journalist. He has lived in London since 1975. Because of his extensive work across many genres Sound on Sound magazine referred to him as "one of the most versatile men in modern music".

Niles was born May 28, 1951 in Hollywood. He is the son of Tony Romano, a composer, singer and guitarist who worked with Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Ray Heindorf, Joe Venuti and Cole Porter, and Pat Silver-Lasky, who writes films, books, plays, and lectures in screenwriting. His parents divorced in 1959 and three years later the 8-year-old Niles moved with his mother to London. He grew up in the care of his mother and stepfather, the poet, playwright and screenwriter Jesse Lasky Jr.. According to Niles in an interview with HitQuarters, they were very negative about him becoming a musician, saying, "They didn't want me to be anything like my father."

In 1975 Niles received a Degree in Composition from Boston’s Berklee College of Music where he studied with jazz greats Pat Metheny, Gary Burton, Michael Gibbs and Herb Pomeroy.