Human-Computer Interaction Books

It has good information that is still relevant for XP and Vista, but is mostly geared towards older versions of Windows.

As a practising information designer I found this to be an excellent source of information, especially for students. This book takes people back to basics, something that a lot of modern IT "professionals" overlook.

Mr. Galitz's reasons for using design standards and the detailed consequences of poor design are backed up by reasearch. He gives specific recommendations for standards such as typefaces, point size, label and caption styles, etc. He explains and uses a good shorthand throughout the book for items as "signal" versus "noise." This is handy to quickly distinguish between things that are good/favorable/communicative/useful compared to things that are interfering/obstructive/not useful. This is an excellent book for anyone wanting to understand the "why" of good screen design and then learn the "what."

If you can still get it, it's worthwhile for the support pro. While it isn't the most current or best written book available for support, it's one I wouldn't trade away.

Strengths: problem defining & solving, phone skills, difficult customers.

Please reprint soon!!

Ralph Wilson's classic has a justly deserved reputation as being the King James Bible for computer support personnel. Cogent, witty and engaging. Has sections for external and internal support, and even valuable advice on interpersonal communications techniques when dealing with users. Also provides tips on handling tantrum-throwers and other problem callers.

Guzdial teaches Python from the angle that you want to use it to easily manipulate various types of multimedia files. The files might contain images, sounds, video or even just plain text. This gives some of you extra motivation to learn the material.

Along the way, you can learn how images are encoded in JPG, and how colours are represented, either in RGB or HSB. There is a fair amount of image analysis and modifications that can be easily done in Python. This does not approach the sophistication of what Photoshop provides. But being able to do a lot yourself, instead of invoking canned Photoshop routines, might appeal to you.

Audio manipulation is also covered, though perhaps not as extensively. There are more specialised audio tools available elsewhere, especially for music synthesis.

The discussion of movies is very weak. Due to the complexity of what is required. Here I suggest you turn to what Apple and others offer.

Guzdial presents concepts in simple form that is easy for beginners to understand. Actually entertaining to read. Worth every penny!

This book achieves both of the things you would want a Python as a first language book to do - it engages the beginner with things they might actually want to do, but doesn't fail to introduce the deeper concepts that are needed to come to appreciate the beauty and elegance of Python.

Focusing on computing applications in the arts, this book uses a clever approach to enable the beginner to do really interesting stuff, very quickly. There are things in there that would be of interest to any photographer, not just a software beginner.

Yes, Photoshop is faster and easier, but it hasn't got this level of control! If you ever wanted to write your own Photoshop plugins, this book might be of interest just as an alternative way to get to design your own effects.

The end of the book gets carried away, trying to pack too much in. It tries to explain OOP and Swing, HTML, Javascript and SQL. I think this is too much to get into one book, and if you are working through the text yourself without any mentors you should probably not give yourself too much grief if you don't get all the way through it.

Admittedly, it is also pretty darned expensive.

Otherwise great stuff! This book fills a gaping hole in the Python literature. If you are an intelligent beginner, it is a great place to get started in getting real control over your computer!

1. Seven Dwarf Robots: The obstacle detection system consists of three ultrasonic transducers, forward, front-left, and front-right. An infrared system is used for inter-robot communications. Each robot has four photodiodes, 90 degrees apart and allows transmissions to be received regardless of rotation. Movement is accomplished by two rear wheels and single castor wheel in the front. Rules: 1. If no object is in front, then drive both wheels forward 2. If an object is in front and to the right, then turn left 3. If an object is in front and to the left, then turn right. 4. If an object or objects are detected in front and both to the left and to the right, then spin around 180 degrees. Goal: Learn how to active obstacle avoidance through active learning, by trial and error and to learn general behavioural responses and high quality peformance.
2. Flocking is a behavior found when a predator is near prey. The animals flock for protection. The flocking animals must remain in close proximity to each other whilst changing direction and speed. They must always avoid collision with each other and obstacles within their environment. The four levels of flocking control are: 1. avoid objects 2. if no other robots are detected nearby become the leader 3. if in a flock try to maintain position 4. if a flock can be seen in the distance, speed up and head towards its, with more priory being given to following the closest visible leader. It is possible there might be more than one leader. "To ensure that this new leader does not simply turn around and rejoin the main body of the flock there is a short period of time fro which it is not allowed to reliquish leadership to any robots that are followers." A new leader will reliquish leadership to another leader in front of it. Robots can diverge from a leader and follow another leader. This happens when a leader robot moves too strongly/quickly when leading. Other robots that are not the leader will be seen as obstacles to avoid. A higher priority weighting is given to the leader based on number of robots in the cluster and a true flock pattern will emerge. "Once the group has become leaderless then they will either become aware of a leader of another group, as a group, follow after it, or conversely, if no other leader is in the vincinity, they will bob and weave until a leader emerges from their ranks."
3. Improved communication and predator/prey algorithms were introduced in the 3rd Generation of seven dwarfs. A reward/penalty system needed to be implement to indicate good or bad behavior. The robots avoid predators and seek a recharge of the battery. The predator responded to prey based on range. Infrared signal could be used to indicate predator or a sudden change in light. The prey flees and the predator chases.
4. "Learning is a like a search process, in which the agent search the world for states that maximise reward and thus minimize punishment." Co-operative mechanism help reduce the size of the search area by distributing work load. Sharing experiences between learning robots does lead to faster and more robust learning. "The task of each robots is to learn to associate the best motor action for its current situation so that it moves around whilst avoiding obstacles. The learning algorithm does not build a map of its environment, just detects ranges of : no object, 500 mm right, 500 mm left, 230 mm right, and 230 left. This information is used to do the action of high probability success. "Given enough time, the robot should select the optimal actions for each situtation."
5. Robots can be trained on patterns for of machine failure and it learns the combination of factors leading up to failure. The combination of factors leading to failure are often complex and difficiult for a human operator to recognize.
6. Artificial neural networks can learn the best mode of operation for an individual production line.
7. ANN can be used to recognize certain features on the face, such as an eye.
8. "Intelligent Wheelchair" moves around on the basis of a map of the location and must avoid hitting things, including walls and people. Yoshio Matsumoto intelligent wheelchair moves left and right by watching the face direction and gaze direction. Voice can start or stop the intelligent wheelchair. Humans and machines cooperating, as one whole.
9. A set of cameras fed ANN images of faces and taught the difference between a smiling face and an angry face. If smiling, the cameras would move gently towards the individual, and stop. If angry, they would move away from the person. The robot could be seen to interact with the facial expressions of the individual which it had been taught to recognize.
10. Nigel Archer's leg provided a study of the type of forces and stresses present in human walking. "Thereby, finding itself in a role in the analysis and correction of erroneous gaits in humans."
11. Cyberhand is a new kind of hand prosthesis. The robot hand is capable of creating a link between the central nerveous system and the device. "The natural hand is controlled by using the neural commands going from the CNS to the peripheral nervous system. " The peripheral system bring information such as hand position,slippage, and force back to the CNS. A telemetric link (receiver and transmitter) for both efferent and afferent signals.
12. Rodney Brooks, behavioural traits of an insect as levels or layers: 1. Avoid contact with objects 2. Wander around, avoiding obstacles 3. Explore the world by setting distance as a main goal 4. Build a map of the environment for use with path planning 5. Notice changes in the static environment 6. Reason about the world in terms of objects and perform task related to the objects 7. Formulate and execute plans that involve changing the state of the world in a desirable way. 8. Reason about the behaviour of objects in the world and modify plans accordingly.
13. "Allowing machines the ability to learn to communicate with each other is an interesting step." Robots must be reward when they communicate in a good way. "With each robot learning to communicate with others, it is exciting to look at the variety of ways in which the range of information communicated can be considerably expanded." One idea is to bring pupil robots together to learn from their leader. The machine could communicate in a language unknown to man.
14. "By connecting more neurons together in a higher density, with good connections between neurons and relatively well developed learning techniques, robot machiens are becoming more and more intelligent." The three law of robotics fail in war conflict scenarios. Asimov's rules are fictional. "Should robots be allow to determine their own future?" "Should robot machines get a vote?" Is there anything we can do to stem the tide of machines? "There appear to be far too many driving forces, both financial and technological, to turn that around." Moravec says the advantage of brain chips is speed. Thought assisted by brain chips executing internal processes. Machines can have their intelligence distributed. What is important is the overall intelligence capabilities and overall self-sufficiency of a machine-controlled network taken together.
15. "It is more likely the fittest machine will be successful in making further machines" Military applications of ANN will proliferate. "We will see intelligent self-controlled aircraft fighting against other intelligent self-controlled aircraft." Machines can be designed to operate and evolve in space.
16. "Once the first powerful machine, with intelligence similar to that of a human, is switched on, we will most liely not get the opportunity to switch it back off."

March Of The Machines: The Breakthrough In Artificial Intelligence by Kevin Warwick (Professor of Cybernetics, University of Reading, United Kingdom) is an informed and informative survey into the history, philosophy, and state-of-the-art exposition on the development of artificial intellegiance within the framework of computer science. Drawing upon the author's extensive knowledge of the field, including his personal achievement of building robots that communicate in their own language, teach each other lessons, and behave as they will with regard to human beings, March Of The Machines is part history and part future speculation concerning the science of robots and its current and forthcoming impact on humanity. Claiming that the possibility exists for machine intelligence to surpass human intelligence, and therefore human domination of the planet, all in the reasonably near future, March Of The Machines is a riveting and thought-provoking discussion of what composes intellect and the fallout of man's own scientific achievements. Also very highly recommended is Kevin Warwick's autobiography, I, Cyborg (025207-2154, $19.95) and his experiences as a cybernetic pioneer who used his own body to advancing the science of cybernetics by surgically replacing parts of his own organic system with technological implants.

From a perusal of the title, it might appear that this book is one of a few that could be classified as "futurism" or "future-projected technology". These books, which have mostly appeared in the last five years or so, have an extremely optimistic view of future developments in artificial intelligence, but most of them do not justify this optimism with rigorous scientific evidence or attempt to quantify what is means for a machine to exhibit intelligence.

This book, first published in 1997, and appearing in paperback last year, is however different in this regard. In the book the author attempts, and in general succeeds, in giving the reader an overview of the status of artificial intelligence as it was in 1997. It does project these developments out to the future, even to the year 2050, but it does so in a way that is free of the overindulgences of media hype and Hollywood exaggerations that frequently accompany "semi-popular" works on artificial intelligence. Even though it is targeted at readers that are not specialists in artificial intelligence, the book does enable readers with a general education to understand just how advanced machine intelligence was during that time. Most importantly, the author strives to identify what it means for a machine to be intelligent, and his proposals for defining and measuring machine intelligence are quite interesting and show keen insight.

Indeed, the author's views on intelligence, machine or otherwise, are quite refreshing, for he does not make them human-centric. Other species exhibit intelligence in ways that are unique to them and highly suitable for their survival. The author emphasizes that life forms or machines have a degree of intelligence that is appropriate to themselves and the contexts and environments in which they are situated. Humans he says, via technological development, are bringing about machines that may very soon exhibit intelligence that is highly competitive to that of human intelligence, but this is to be measured relative to the needs of each, and these needs may conflict. The author is concerned with this potential conflict, and he devotes a sizable portion of the book in elaborating on just how it may come about.

Throughout the book the author endeavors to contrast the differences between human and machine intelligence. The fact that humans behave and perform differently makes any comparison between machines and humans problematic he believes. The absence of a `typical' human as a standard of comparison for machine intelligence implies that other measures must be devised for estimating this intelligence. And, just as there is high variability among human performance and ability, it is to be expected that this would also be the case for machines. The machines will differ in their respective abilities and with respect to humans. In some instances these machines will "outperform" humans on various tasks, as they have done in many cases up to the time of publication of this book and at the present time.

Another interesting difference between human and machine intelligence that the author points out concerns what has been called `domain-specificity' by many researchers. In the author's view, machines that are performing "intelligent acts" do so only in certain domains that are highly specified. A machine adept at chess for example may not be good at doing network management. Humans though can think and accomplish goals in many different domains: they can be good chess players as well as good network managers. However currently there is much debate among cognitive scientists as to whether human expertise is the result of a collection of specialized modules that interact in some way or whether it is the result of a "general" type of module that can think in many different domains. The author does not indulge himself in this debate, but instead emphasizes that machines and humans in general exhibit different types of intelligence. It is only when their performance on specific tasks is compared can one say whether a machine is "smarter" than a human, or vice versa.
In the author's view, both humans and machines can learn both in a "passive" and in an "active" sense. Passive learning is closer to what one would describe as "memorization", whereas active learning involves the deliberate initiation of the learning process. Scientific investigation would be an excellent example of active learning, for it involves setting up equipment, taking measurements, etc, in order to test a particular hypothesis or hunch on the part of the investigator. Clearly some machines can do passive learning, via the addition of extra rules or data, but not all can, says the author. Machines can also perform active learning and the author discusses an example of how this is done. While doing this he diverges into a discussion of the `frame problem' in artificial intelligence, which he dismisses as not being a limitation of machine intelligence, giving examples of just why he takes this viewpoint. The frame problem, he concludes, is just as much a problem for humans as well as other life forms.

Particularly insightful is the author's discussion on the advantages of using neural networks for learning rather than depending on expert systems. He is careful to point out that artificial neurons are not exactly the same as human neurons, and therefore that artificial neural network brains will be different from human brains. The performance of these artificial brains will therefore be different, and thus their intelligence will be. The author then asks the reader to consider what goals are to be accomplished using these artificial brains. Since the construction of these brains is done to get something different from human brains, the advantages in using them must be delineated. In the author's view they must go beyond the limitations imposed by the human brain. The author spends over half of the book describing what has been accomplished in the actual construction of artificial brains, with emphasis on the activities of his laboratory at the University of Reading in the UK. All of this discussion is fascinating reading.

This collection of essays on the open source movement could be called a second edition to the book "Open Sources: Voices from the Revolution" that was published in 1999. That book spent much space trying to argue that the open source movement was legitimate and here to stay. That argument has long since been settled, so this book takes up the current and future trends of the open source movement. The essays can be read in any order, and depending on your expertise, some may not be of any real interest to you- for example the open source biology essay might not be valuable to someone interested in network security. However, all essays are written to be accessible to a wide audience in spite of that fact. For example, I have no background in biology whatsoever, but I still found the essay on open source biology an understandable and interesting read. I particularly enjoyed the essay on the open source paradigm shift by Tim O'Reilly. His premise is that free and open source developers are in much the same position today that IBM was in 1981 when it changed the rules of the computer industry, but failed to understand the consequences of the change. This allowed others, Microsoft in particular, to reap the benefits. O'Reilly concludes that existing proprietary software vendors are no better off, playing by the old rules while the new rules are reshaping the industry around them. Another favorite of mine was on the commoditization of software in which it is explained that this process has been driven by standards, in particular by the rise of communications-oriented systems such as the Internet, which depend on shared protocols, and define the interfaces and datatypes shared between cooperating components instead of those components' internals. There are also two fascinating essays on the open source movement in China and India, neither of which was really a factor when the first edition of this book was published six years ago. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in where technology might be headed in the future, not just those who are employed in the tech industry. I notice that nothing about the contents of the book is currently shown by Amazon, so I show the table of contents here for the purpose of completeness:
The list of essays are:
1. The Mozilla Project: Past and Future by Mitchell Baker
2. Open Source and Proprietary Software Development by Chris DiBona
3. A Tale of Two Standards by Jeremy Allison
4. Open Source and Security by Ben Laurie
5. Dual Licensing by Michael Olson
6. Open Source and the Commoditization of Software by Ian Murdock
7. Open Source and the Commodity Urge: Disruptive Models for a Disruptive Development Process by Matthew N. Asay
8. Under the Hood: Open Source and Open Standards Business Models in Context by Stephen R. Walli
9. Open Source and the Small Entrepreneur by Russ Nelson
10. Why Open Source Needs Copyright Politics by Wendy Seltzer
11. Libre Software in Europe by Jesus M. Gonzalez-BarahonaGregorio Robles
12. OSS in India by Alolita Sharma and Robert Adkins
13. When China Dances with OSS by Boon-Lock Yeo, Louisa Liu, and Sunil Saxena
14. How Much Freedom Do You Want? by Bruno Souza
15. Making a New World by Doc Searls
16. The Open Source Paradigm Shift by Tim O'Reilly
17. Extending Open Source Principles Beyond Software Development
by Pamela Jones
18. Open Source Biology by Andrew Hessel
19. Everything Is Known by Eugene Kim
20. The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir by Larry Sanger
21. Open Beyond Software by Sonali K. Shah
22. Patterns of Governance in Open Source by Steven Weber
23. Communicating Many to Many by Jeff Bates and Mark Stone
Appendixes :
A. The Open Source Definition
B. Referenced Open Source Licenses
C. Columns from Slashdot

Chris DiBona, Danese Cooper and Mark Stone edit Open Sources 2.0: The Continuing Evolution, a collection of essays from today's tech leaders exploring open source's impact on the software industry. Open source is network- enabled distributed collaboration that holds the potential of changing not only online business itself, but the nature of collaboration. Articles address the future of open source in essays that cover not just the developing technology but the participation of international communities. A 'must' for any interested in open source who would understand its ongoing evolution and potential.

Open Source Software (OSS) has radically redefined the landscape of the software industry and the Information Technology field. As much a mindset as a methodology, there are many elements of OSS that draw some of the deepest thinkers of our field. You can find some of those essays in the book Open Sources 2.0 - The Continuing Evolution, edited by Chris DiBona, Danese Cooper, and Mark Stone. There's a little something here for everyone...

Contents:
Part 1 - Open Source - Competition and Evolution: The Mozilla Project - Past and Future; Open Source and Proprietary Software Development; A Tale of Two Standards; Open Source and Security; Dual Licensing; Open Source and the Commoditization of Software; Open Source and the Commodity Urge - Disruptive Models for a Disruptive Development Process; Under the Hood - Open Source and Open Standards Business Models in Context; Open Source and the Small Entrepreneur; Why Open Source Needs Copyright Policies; Libre Software in Europe; OSS in India; When China Dances with OSS; How Much Freedom Do You Want?
Part 2 - Beyond Open Source - Collaboration and Community: Making a New World; The Open Source Paradigm Shift; Extending Open Source Principles Beyond Software Development; Open Source Biology; Everything Is Known; The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia - A Memoir; Open Beyond Software; Patterns of Governance in Open Source; Communicating Many to Many
Part 3 - Appendixes: The Open Source Definition; Referenced Open Source Licenses; Columns from Slashdot; Index

As with all compilations from various writers and authors, it's not possible to have all the articles flow with the same voice and pace. And really, they shouldn't. You're looking to get a wide array of opinions and insights, not a blended mind dump from a single writer. Conversely, you'll find that some of the articles resonate with you, and others have you moving into scan mode to get to the next one. If you keep that in mind as you're working through the book, you'll get a lot more out of it.

For me, there were two areas that were enjoyable and valuable. The story of how Wikipedia went through growing pains and worked through rules and culture was interesting. Likewise, the story of Slashdot and how it got to what it is today is insightful. I still don't care for the site, but you can't argue it's effect in the technology world. The most thought-provoking essays for me revolved around the commoditization of software. Coupled with a different book I recently finished, I realize that certain software vendors are in a very precarious position, and they are following the same path that has led others to destruction as they attempt to hold on to what doesn't work any more. Those essays would have been worth the cost of the book alone to me...

If you're part of the OSS movement, or if you're trying to understand how it will affect your business, this is a good book to read and ponder...

There are few books that discuss the social issues of software development. This book not only does that, but it has a well-rounded variety of topics.

You don't have to be interested in every topic to get something out of this book. I thought this book would have been worthwhile if I'd only been interested in one or two of the groups of topics.

Since this is a collection of his articles, the chapters tend to be short, so this is a book that tends to be fairly easy-to-read and appropriate for most of the people you might want to recommend it to.

This book is a collection of Constantine's columns published in a variety of magazines. I was not familiar with his work previously, and this book shows why he was a successfuly columnist: In each of his 4-6 page chapters, he successfully drives a particular point home.

This book is probably not suitable as a text book for any particular topic, but it can get your thought process in various disciplines started. Since the chapters are very short and independent, it is ideally suited as bathroom or bedside reading material. What works a bit to the detriment of this strategy is that the chapters are sorted by topic; counterintuitive as this may sound, in a book like this, I would prefer for the topics to be mixed up.

A slight peeve is the unsealed paper binding of this book, which smudges easily. I hope publishers are reconsidering their use of this binding, which seems to be on the increase.

Fantastic : I wish I'd read these articles when they were originally published over the period 1992-1995.

There are 77 essays, which even today, 10 years after their original publication, have lost none of their relevance to those working in the field.

There was barely a single essay that I didn't get some benefit from reading, but I particularly liked the essays on.
- Cowboy Coders
- Collaboration
- All of Section 4, Tools, Models and Methods, which gives a number of very visionary essays on CASE
- Reuse
- Usable Objects
- Use Cases

I can't recommend the book enough; I'm certainly going to think twice before I lend it out to anyone, in case it never comes back!

3 type of prototype high low rapid

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This second edition of a collection of great papers on human-computer interaction (HCI) is a different snapshot of the field -- an excellent introduction. In addition to the high quality papers, the text writter b the editors, all highly regarded in the field, add a lot to the reader's understanding. Recommended for students (required for all grad students in HCI), researchers, and for practitioners looking for something deeper than guidelines.

If you've gotten this far without actually looking at the summary information about this tome above, please note that this book contains nearly 1,000 pages. This book is a collection of research papers (of the sort you'd find published in books on HCI or from conferences of the ACM SIGCHI committee) organized into chapters by some shared topic (i.e. human factors, hypertext, speed/language/audition). Each chapter is preceded by a summary of the papers contained therein along with often useful bibliographic citation of related works, all grounded in their utility toward the field of HCI by the editors.

Nevertheless, as my title expresses, this book is even by the time I encountered it in graduate school (in 2003), relatively dated. As a supplement to recent publications on the ACM or IEEE digital libraries or through a process of professorial selection of relevant pieces it can nevertheless be an extremely useful textbook to a graduate-level course. As "fun" reading, or as a reference, I would recommend it for the citations to critical work, but also strongly suggest a reading of emergent and current work in the field.

With inexpensive yet powerful computing power and electronics, autonomous robots find a plethora of applications: toys, entertainment, education, and interactive services. Robots for Kids comes at the right time of this new application era. This book focuses on the roles of robotics in education. The first part of the book contains four chapters on the new robotic technology for the kids. As a robotics researcher, I am delighted to read the development history of the LEGO Mindstorms Robotics Invention System starting from its incubation period in MIT's Media Lab. The chapter on Sony's AIBO provides inside look on the hardware and software design and integration of this popular robot. For people interested in developing intelligent robots, this is a very informative chapter. The chapter on a robotic storytelling environment showed how to incorporate state-of-art technology to elementary school education. However, the chapter on the story behind the scene of a high-tech toy product development is the most intriguing experience. One can never expect the product development cycle for those high-tech interactive toys, such as the Furby, to be so complicate.

The second part of this book contains five chapters on using robotics in education, from elementary school teaching, high school robotics competitions, university outreach program, to robotics summer camps. For educators, this part of the book provides quite detailed descriptions about how the robotics activities are organized, responses from the students and the impact of using robotics in modern education.

One interesting part of this book is the inclusion of kids' responses to using robots as educational tools. The perspective of children on the educational robotics is invaluable as it provides the first-hand user experience of technologies developed by adults.

In summary, I think this book is a very good reference for robotics researchers and educators who want to explore the new possibilities and potentials of robotics. It is also well organized and very delightful to read.

This is a very decent collection of individually authored chapters from various groups of educators and engineers working in the field of robotics for teaching and for play. Most of the information presented is anecdotal and case-study, giving what seems to be a good overview of the current state of the art (particularly the state of the art in schools). Some of the reference sections at the end of the chapters point to very good articles that help ground one in the theory of techno-literacy.

Wow! I just got done reading this book for the second time in a row. I loved it! I also would like to add that I just got done with my Senior thesis of "Robots: America's Answer to Dwindling Math Scores". (I also just sent it in to be published! ;D) I admit, my first reading was for content. The second reading was solely for pleasure. Of the 20 sources I used on my 23 page case study, this book became my 'bible.' Nothing I found on this topic compares.

This book is an assortment of well chosen essays in which Druin and Hendler are the editors. My favorite essay regards the FIRST robotics competition. Everything is detailed from the educational impact, mentor how-to's, and student development to gaining corporate sponsorship, student interviews, and a winning team's success story. The book is worth buying just for this essay alone.

However, the various essays regarding Lego Mindstorms are superb as well. One essay details a step-by-step process of how to mimic her "Robocamp." Another from MIT profs explains how Mindstorms came to existence. There are also various case studies regarding the educational research with children and Lego's done in different parts of the world. One can't help but walk away from this book thinking that our "old school" curriculum must be updated with these new enticing technologies!

Book reviews usually focus on the contents of the book. In this case, I think knowing more about the author is more helpful. Barry Jones is a latter-day Benjamin Franklin, with a better memory. Barry Jones has an amazing brain for remembering facts. In the early 60's, he became the greatest quizmaster in the world, starting by making a name for himself on Bob Dyer's Pick-a-box, and then taking on international competition. His knowledge base is global. Back then, quizzes were good radio (and television), and Barry has corrected the Encyclopedia Brittanica twice in competition, giving both the Britannica answer and the better scientific explanation. These powers of memory are combined with one of the most acute and clear-thinking minds in the world, which is why he is regarded in Australia as a national treasure. His conclusions are not always popular, and when he first published Sleepers, Wake! in 1982, they upset many people, particularly politicians who knew very little of technology and change. Which is how he finished up in politics, playing an important role. If you like books written by thinking and gentle men who have been elevated to high office on pure talent and good will, and are interested in the economic future of the industrial world, then this book is an enlightenment. And no, I don't agree with all his conclusions, but his analysis is beyond reproach!

Barry Jones's thesis about revolutionary changes in the labour force, Sleepers, Wake! was originally published in 1982 and is now in its fourth edition. Jones explores the impact and future implications of the Information technology revolution on the labour market and society in general. The very fact that this book has endured the test of time provides a good indication as to the strength of Jones's analysis. An immensely stimulating and thought provoking read

This book discusses the links between technological change and employment levels in developed countries, with an emphasis on Australia. Barry Jones introduces a five-part economic analysis to assist analysis of employment levels, as well as a good analysis of historical impacts of technology. The book also delves into the question of what we will do when the need to work declines as technology displaces more workers. Written in a very erudite style, with thorough referencing. A book everyone should read if they are at all concerned about having to work for a living. Now available in a 4th edition, which you should look at for the latest data.

This is the best book I have seen so far on design of voice user interfaces with a lot of sound examples and pratical advices.

This is probably the most useful book about UI design for speech applications I've seen, very sensible and straight forward, with the right amount of attention given to a good range of topics.

I hate the term 'VUI' because it sounds silly when you say it. Apart from that, this book's a great source for UI workers.

This book describes a methodology and gives pieces of advice for developing speech applications. The focus is on telephony applications. The book is based on the experience of the authors in developing such applications at Nuance.

The book is organized into four parts:
1. Introduction
2. Requirement gathering
3. Detailed design
4. Development and Tuning
Each part starts with a description of the general principles guiding the development of a speech application. They end with an "applied" example showing how these principles are used in a real application.

The introduction provides an overview of speech technology and an overview of the methodology (requirements, detailed design, development/tuning) used to develop a speech application. This methodology is used as a guide for the rest of the book.

The requirement gathering part covers meeting with the company that wants to deploy the speech application and getting information from them. The same kind of information as for other software projects is required: business case, target customers, environment integration, scope of the system, etc. Two interesting additions to the usual process are:
1. Specifying the persona. How should the system be perceived (serious, funny, etc.)? This will impact the prompts, the selection of the voice actor, and the design of the dialog flow.
2. Specifying the type of interaction: system directed or user directed. The former relies on grammars. The latter relies on SLM and robust parsing. This has a huge influence on design and realization.

The detailed design phase is concerned with designing the dialog flow, the prompts and the grammars. The authors put an emphasis in developing systems that (1) sound good and (2) are efficient. Sounding good means developing prompts that abide to spoken language rules (by opposition to written language) and paying attention to prosody. The sections on prompt design and prosody are very informative. Efficiency is ensured by making the dialog flow nicely. Techniques include thinking in terms of user scenarios, providing shortcuts to common tasks, educating users about efficient ways of using the system. Efficiency is also improved by helping users to recover from errors efficiently. Techniques here include quick confirmation strategies, providing help prompts, and providing access to main menu/operator.

The development and tuning part focuses mainly on tuning grammars and working with the voice actor. Tuning the grammar is done to ensure appropriate coverage while maintaining good recognition accuracy. Tuning must be based on real data since it is difficult to predict how people will use the system. Working with the voice actor is an important part of the system development. The authors give pieces of advice on how to have successful recording sessions.

The book has a nice balance of general principles and pieces of advice that can be directly applied. Compared to Kotelly's book, it has a more in-depth coverage of the topics. Compared to Balentine's book it provides a broader view of the development process as well as more detailed explanations of the principles behind the recommendations. On the minus side, the book is solely based on the experience of the authors. Although this experience is extensive, it seems that parts of the book are somewhat biased (e.g., SLM vs. grammar-based speech recognition, high focus on personas). It is not always clear when the numbers given in the books are based on real experience and when they are invented by the authors for the mock application. Some of the pieces of advice may also be difficult to directly apply in practice, since they depend on using vendor tools.

In my opinion this book should be required reading for developers of telephony applications and providers of platforms for speech application development.