“It's Better to be a Good Machine than a Bad Person is the most cantankerous, entertaining, and savvy book about voice-interaction design on the market. It strikes a resoundingly conservative note in a high-flying time, but Bruce Balentine has more experience in speech-interface development by himself than whole departments of high-flying voice designers at most companies; they ignore him at their peril, and at their customer's peril. In this book, he takes on the sacred cows of the profession with contagious good humour, unfailing clarity, and relentless common sense. You won't always agree with Bruce. I don't. But you would be a fool not to listen to him. I do. Besides, how else will you find out what a Monkey Butt User is?”

- Randy Allen Harris, Professor of Linguistics, Rhetoric, and Communication Design, at the University of Waterloo, and author of Voice Interaction Design: Crafting the New Conversational Interfaces.

“Here's another great book on speech user interface design from Bruce Balentine, the lead author of How to Build a Speech Recognition Application. Reading this collection of essays is like having a personal conversation with one of the leading practitioners in the field. Have you ever wondered how to explain speech recognition to your friends? Check out Essays 25-29 for the Allegory of the Dungeon. Have you ever become exasperated trying to explain the difference between common practice and good practice? Then you must read 'Handling OOG: Design by Hypothesis' (#112), 'Identifying Bad Practices' (#121), and 'Opening Greeting Bad Practices' (#122). The style is personal and entertaining -- the information is invaluable."

- James R. Lewis, Ph.D., Certified Human Factors Practitioner