Rating: 
Summary: Voice application development - great resource
Review: Actually the book is almost 500 pages and with small fonts and tight spacing, this book is full of useful tips and suggestions on wide range of topics. Probably the only book on 2.0 out there (others hardly touch on 2.0). Very good reference chapter. Other chapters provide good coverage as well. Thumbs up from me.
Rating:
Summary: Timely reference
Review: Agree with other reviewers. A thorough and detailed reference on VoiceXML and voice application development. I wish authors had put VoiceXML 2.0 reference on some website (though examples are available on the CD). Also liked the tips throughout the book on VUI. It is the most important aspect of voice application development and the authors kept emphasizing that through the entire book with examples. Excellent.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent VoiceXML coverage
Review: Easily one of the best books out there on VoiceXML (2.0) and voice application development. The reference guide is just so handy. I also found the tips on security, vui design, and application development very handy. Authors have done a great job of covering a wide range of topics, given a good introduction on basics as well as good pointers on advanced topics. Thanks for a very useful reference.
Rating: 
Summary: Use this book only as a reference not to learn VoiceXML
Review: I was mislead by the accompanying great reviews for this book. Having bought and read the book I find that it serves more as a reference than to illustrate how VoiceXML can be used through example applications. But I should admit though that this book does a good job of serving as a reference. I also bought "VoiceXML: 10 Projects to Voice-Enable your system" that helped me to come up to speed to do a VoiceXML project.
Rating:
Summary: Great VoiceXML book
Review: It is funny how I was glancing at the books and this book Voice XML caught my attention. I was looking for a book like this. This is a great resource for Voice XML developers like me. The book covers wide range of topics. The book is an excellent hands on guide to build voice applications with Voice XML 2.0. I liked the VUI design tips throughout the book. Great job!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent resource
Review: This book is an excellent resource for a VoiceXML developer. It covers a wide range of topics in detail and has some excellent VUI design tips. I love the cross reference of voice technology companies and the services that they provide.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent resource
Review: This book is an excellent resource for a VoiceXML developer. It covers a wide range of topics in detail and has some excellent VUI design tips. I love the cross reference of voice technology companies and the services that they provide.
Rating:
Summary: Most complete, well rounded book to date
Review: This is a summary of the full review available at:
http://voicexmlplanet.com/reviews/vxmlbook.htmlIn short, this is the VoiceXML book I wish I had written. The authors have produced a comprehensive title that includes gems that could only have originated from masters of the craft. My only complaint is that the book is a bit too biased towards Tellme (one of the authors is an employee), but this can be forgiven based on the quality and depth of the content. My judgement is that this book is the most well rounded in-depth book on the topic that's been published to date. I am very happy with the mix of content, summaries of important concepts such as linguistics, speech recognition, and speech synthesis, as well as the in-your-face examples and complete reference. In fact, I liked it so much that I will probably be using it as a standard reference in my company's VoiceXML training course.
Rating:
Summary: Good coverage, up-to-date, very userful
Review: This is the best VoiceXML book I've seen. Most VoiceXML books try to do too much: talk about voice hardware, telephony, the history of voice, tts, as well as be a VoiceXML reference. The weakness of these books is that one or more of these sections reveals that the authors do not really command the knowledge needed to make these sections useful. This book also attempts to do these things, but for the most part is able to carry it off. If you're looking for a reference, this is the book to get. The reference section is current VoiceXML 2.0 (October 2001), which is an advantage in and of itself. But the real strength of the reference section is its depth. Each element, (e.g., <assign>, <grammar>, <filled>) has an entry for syntax (how to invoke the element), a description (what the element is used for), a thorough discussion of its attributes (that is, a description of the attribute), a usage statement (the elements parents and children), and an example (a snipet of complete code that uses the element). The examples and discussion of attributes really set this book apart from its peers. There is a brief discussion of the architecture of a VoiceXML app, and a couple of paragraphs discussing the differences between VoiceXML 1.0 and 2.0. The book also gives, contrary to my expectations, a history of the voice industry, a history of VoiceXML, and a discussion of players in the industry. What makes this book's treatment of these topics unusual is that the authors (particularly Kunins, I suspect) actually know these fields. I don't normally want these sections in a reference book (it just adds bulk around the section I really want) but I found them quite compelling here. I learned quite a bit from reading them. The book also contains sections on Dynamic VoiceXML, Security, Voice App Life Cycle, VUI Design, the Future of VoiceXML, and a case study. I haven't read these sections yet, so I can't comment on them. I do know, however, that the sections I have read are sufficiently superior to make this THE VoiceXML book on their own. If I were to criticize the book, I would fault the authors' lavish praise of TellMe (this is minor and not unexpected) and the examples in the reference section. The examples are quite good for someone learning VoiceXML, and the authors are commended for including them. The fault (albeit a minor one) is that they are fairly vanilla. So, while I would have preferred more examples, I concede that such examples would make the book much larger and the inclusion of "advanced" examples to the exclusion of "canonical" examples would have made them less useful to developers learning VoiceXML. Overall, if you are going to own one VoiceXML reference, THIS should be that one.
Rating:
Summary: Good coverage, up-to-date, very userful
Review: This is the best VoiceXML book I've seen. Most VoiceXML books try to do too much: talk about voice hardware, telephony, the history of voice, tts, as well as be a VoiceXML reference. The weakness of these books is that one or more of these sections reveals that the authors do not really command the knowledge needed to make these sections useful. This book also attempts to do these things, but for the most part is able to carry it off. If you're looking for a reference, this is the book to get. The reference section is current VoiceXML 2.0 (October 2001), which is an advantage in and of itself. But the real strength of the reference section is its depth. Each element, (e.g., , , ) has an entry for syntax (how to invoke the element), a description (what the element is used for), a thorough discussion of its attributes (that is, a description of the attribute), a usage statement (the elements parents and children), and an example (a snipet of complete code that uses the element). The examples and discussion of attributes really set this book apart from its peers.There is a brief discussion of the architecture of a VoiceXML app, and a couple of paragraphs discussing the differences between VoiceXML 1.0 and 2.0. The book also gives, contrary to my expectations, a history of the voice industry, a history of VoiceXML, and a discussion of players in the industry. What makes this book's treatment of these topics unusual is that the authors (particularly Kunins, I suspect) actually know these fields. I don't normally want these sections in a reference book (it just adds bulk around the section I really want) but I found them quite compelling here. I learned quite a bit from reading them. The book also contains sections on Dynamic VoiceXML, Security, Voice App Life Cycle, VUI Design, the Future of VoiceXML, and a case study. I haven't read these sections yet, so I can't comment on them. I do know, however, that the sections I have read are sufficiently superior to make this THE VoiceXML book on their own. If I were to criticize the book, I would fault the authors' lavish praise of TellMe (this is minor and not unexpected) and the examples in the reference section. The examples are quite good for someone learning VoiceXML, and the authors are commended for including them. The fault (albeit a minor one) is that they are fairly vanilla. So, while I would have preferred more examples, I concede that such examples would make the book much larger and the inclusion of "advanced" examples to the exclusion of "canonical" examples would have made them less useful to developers learning VoiceXML. Overall, if you are going to own one VoiceXML reference, THIS should be that one.
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