"Slide:ology is practical, it's highly visual, and it's beautiful. I love this book," observes the visionary author of "Presentation Zen," Garr Reynolds, in his popular blog discussing professional presentation design. According to Garr, "Slide:ology should come bundled with every copy of PowerPoint or Keynote ever sold from now on. I received a draft copy about three months ago that blew me away--the final product is even better than I expected. I just got my copy over the weekend. At 274 pages, the book is meaty without being bloated." In fact, in order to demonstrate how easy it is to artfully place elements in Keynote and save the file as a video, Garr created a entertaining video review of Nancy Duarte's slide:ology using a "cheap but useful Nikon point-n-shoot."

"If the do-it-yourself trend is a revolution, then Dale Dougherty and Tim O'Reilly are its Tom Paines," writes reporter Elizabeth Corcoran in a recent Forbes.com story, Making Future Headlines. Thomas Paine, if you recall, was America's cerebral, revolutionary activist and the author of a mightily influential 1776 pamphlet, "Common Sense," supporting the American colonies independence from Great Britain. Like Paine, Tim, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, and Dale, editor and publisher of Make, are "awfully good at spotting trends," writes Corcoran. So good, in fact, that Forbes also included the pair in their photo feature on techno-wizards--"In Pictures: Eight People Inventing The Future."

Think you can solve common Adobe AIR related coding problems? Then you qualify for the Adobe AIR Cookbook Cook-off contest sponsored by O'Reilly Media to celebrate the upcoming publication of the Adobe AIR Cookbook. During this contest, we invite you to submit your best solutions to common AIR coding challenges for a chance to win some great prizes. See http://www.adobe.com/go/air_cookbook for more details.

Author Van Lindberg is both software engineer and practicing attorney. His new book, Intellectual Property and Open Source tackles the slippery subject of intellectual property. In this interview, Van explains why intellectual property law is so important to developers—any developers—and shares his most important tips for developers starting out in the world of open source. Read more.

David Pogue returns with a thoroughly updated edition of iPhone: The Missing Manual. And here David reveals his best, up-to-the-nanosecond iPhone tricks. "The beauty of the new iPhone 3G is that you don't need one," explains David. "Almost all of the juicy stuff actually comes with the iPhone 2.0 software and the online App Store, both of which run perfectly well on the old iPhone as well." Find out how to geotag photos, turn off 3G in order to save on battery life, produce accented characters, and easily tap out contractions.

Our Digital Media division here at O'Reilly just released a book that's a bit different from our typical style. Subtitled "The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations," slide:ology focuses on practical approaches that combine conceptual thinking and inspirational design, with insightful case studies from the world's leading brands. This highly anticipated resource was written by Nancy Duarte, President and CEO of Duarte Design in Mountain View, CA, the firm that created the presentation for "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's Oscar-winning film. In a recent Q&A with Nancy, I was able to shed a bit of light on this new book.

I recently had a chance to ask Jesse Stay, author of FBML Essentials a few questions about his book and just why it's so important right now. His book revolves around the fundamentals of the Facebook Markup Language--Facebook's version of HTML--which makes it easy to develop applications specifically for Facebook. If you can think of a niche that hasn't yet been filled in the Facebook application world, but don't quite know how to build one yourself, then this book is for you. Keep reading to see why Jesse wrote this book, as well as how you can win your own copy of this essential reference.

Buying one ate up precious time I didn't have to give. What am I talking about? An iPhone, of course! So it isn't without self-interest that I'm pleased to announce that all three electronic formats of David Pogue's iPhone: The Missing Manual, Second Edition are available now.

Any Photoshop user knows that achieving better color with a picture requires a little effort--but we also know that in the end it's worth it! In this week's episode of dekePod 003: Don't Fear the Lab Mode, Deke McClelland walks us through what you need to know in order to change your photos from "ok" to "brilliant."

Last month photographer Rick Sammon, author of 28 books on digital photography, including his latest, Face-to-Face: Rick Sammon's Complete Guide to Photographing People gave a live webcast, sharing some of his top tips for taking great digital photos and answering questions from the audience. His pictures—including some from his latest trip to Papua New Guinea—are stunning and his knowledge is invaluable. If you missed the live show, you can still benefit from his expert advice—just watch the movie!