Hewlett-Packard Company has made its e-speak source code freely available to software developers and the public via the Internet at www.e-speak.net. More than 1,000 software developers are working with HP to develop applications on the e-speak platform; HP also is working with more than 100 business partners to create e-speak services. Examples of such businesses include an engineer dispatch e-service by Ericsson and a multimedia broker for training services by Helsinki Telephone. E-speak, announced by HP in May, is an Internet software technology platform developed by HP Labs designed to revolutionize the way people and businesses use the Net. Much like how HTML made it easy for people to find and access information anywhere on the World Wide Web, e-speak will make it possible to request and locate services on the Net. The e-speak development project is leveraging existing technologies and standards. Therefore, even some of the innovations in e-speak, such as the specification of negotiation policies and contracts that programs can understand and execute, use existing standard protocols such as XML. E-speak complements device-to-device communication, such as HP’s Chai, Sun’s Jini and Microsoft’s UpnP. E-speak leverages key collaborative technology-standardization efforts, such as RosettaNet, ontology.net and Microsoft’s BizTalk. E-speak utilizes open technology standards on the Internet, including XML, LDAP, HTTP, WAP, SSL, SLP and SNMP. www.hp.com