Acknowledgments

The accumulated knowledge in this book is the result of years of collaboration between the authors, Nuance Professional Services, the Nuance Dialog R&D team, the Nuance Speech R&D team, and Nuance Speech University. Many people have contributed to the accumulation of knowledge represented here, including Rajeev Agarwal, Sandra Ahlen, Gorm Amand, Kerry Bartlett, Mar Bergeron, Carol Bleyle, Wally Brill, Kathy Brown, Dan Burnett, Candace Cardinal, Ari Chanen, Philippe Charest, Hong Chen, Mike Coskey, Carol Curt, Jenny DeGroot, Greg Dehaan, Melissa Dougherty, Benoit Dumoulin, Kevin Erler, Lisa Falkson, Daniel Ferrero, Malan Gandhi, Alvaro Garcia, Frank Geck, Debajit Ghosh, Rebecca Nowlin Green, Leo Haasbroek, Mike Hochberg, Lauren Hodgson, Judee Humberg, Vitaly Iourtchenko, Eric Jackson, David James, Charles Jankowski, Kathy Karey, Karen Kaushansky, Brian Krause, Vijaya Kurada, Remi Kwan, Ruth Lang, Will Lavery, Dominic Lavoie, Nicole Leduc, Sophia Lee, Melanie Levasseur, Hank Liao, Ari Limon, Kristine Ma, Mike Maben, Marcelo Marsano, Muneeb Master, Jane Mather, Ian Menzies, Art Morgan, Bob Morgen, Idil Moskateel, Ali Mouline, Leslie Myers, Hy Murveit, Christine Nakatani, Claudio Pateras, Cathy Pearl, Doug Peters, Marco Petroni, Tony Rajakumar, Vijay Raman, Padma Ramesh, Lys Reddy, Dave Resnick, Keith Rolle, Eliot Rubinov, Marikka Rypa, Martha Senturia, Ben Shahshahani, Tony Sheeder, Shamitha Somashekar, Krishnan Srinivasan, Elizabeth Strand, Jared Strawderman, Brian Strope, Ann Thyme-Gobbel, Real Tremblay, Amy Ulug, Margaret Urban, Linda Waldon, Nino Walker, Trace Wax, Jim White, Todd Yampol, and Torsten Zeppenfeld.

A number of others at Nuance have provided encouragement for this project, including Steve Erlich, Ron Croen, Chuck Berger, Matt Lennig, Bruce Dougherty, Paul Scott, and Doug Sharp. Tony Sheeder and Rebecca Nowlin Green gave talks at VWorld 2001 in which they presented a sample application that formed the basis for the sample application presented here. Harry Hersh, Jennifer Lai, Roger Chapman, Chris Schmandt, Nathaniel Borenstein, and a number of anonymous reviewers provided extensive feedback on an early draft that resulted in significant improvements.

The team at Addison-Wesley has been tremendously helpful and supportive in guiding us through this project, including Peter Gordon, Curt Johnson, Heather Mullane, John Fuller, Bernard Gaffney, Betsy Hardinger, Amy Fleischer, and Jacquelyn Doucette.

Finally, we thank our families for love, support, and tolerance. Beth Taylor (Mike Cohen's wife) provided significant editing help that made the manuscript far clearer and more readable.