Recently O'Reilly sponsored the Adobe AIR Cookbook Cook-Off contest, a chance for developers to submit recipes and win prizes. And many of the top entries can be found in O'Reilly's latest, Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook, including the winning entry from Greg Jastrab. In this excerpt from the book, we give you Greg's prize-winning contribution, Migrating Serialization Changes in ActionScript.

Juval Lowy's Programming WCF Services is considered to be the most definitive treatment of Microsoft's WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) available. In it, Juval provides both the guidance and insight needed to master the skills for building maintainable, extensible, and reusable WCF-based applications. Juval's talent as a teacher—that for tackling vast subjects and making them easy to learn—comes through especially well in this appendix from his book: An Introduction to Service-Orientation. These days, there's no avoiding the phrase "service-oriented," but few people can explain what it means and why it's so important. Juval gets to the heart of the matter in this excerpt.

Two new books from O'Reilly's Companion Series offer a complete photography class, tailored specifically for folks using Canon's new Digital Rebel cameras. Both--The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi/450D Companion and The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS/1000D Companion--are by producer and videographer Ben Long. In each of his handy pocket guides, Ben not only provides a detailed one-stop camera manual but he also walks you through all the basic photography theories that apply to any camera. And here Ben provides tips, warnings, and reminders from the books for using the XS cameras (which are applicable to most DSLRs). Read on to learn more.

Beauty may be skin deep, but most of us hope to look our best in photos. And the following excerpt from Derrick Story's handy new book, The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers, offers a digital makeover of sorts--recipes for brightening a toothy grin and eliminating a skin blotch or two. "Even though you may not be the photographer to the stars, there will be times when you need to touch up a portrait," notes Derrick, whose new guidebook includes 18 easy-to-follow recipes for perfecting images. But remember, when it comes to digital enhancements Derrick offers this caution, "Regardless of which recipe you're working with at any given moment remember that less is more when retouching portraits." Read on to learn more.

The following is an excerpt from the newly released Programming ASP.NET 3.5 by Jesse Liberty, Dan Maharry, and Dan Hurwitz. According to them, ASP.NET 3.5 is possibly the fastest, most efficient, most reliable, and best-supported way to create interactive web applications today. Combined with the development tools available from Microsoft (both free and commercial), it is incredibly easy to create websites that look great and perform well.

If you're running a small business or thinking about starting one in today's brutal economic climate, a special report put together by Forbes.com can help you make the right decisions about technology. The package includes five stories illuminating everything from "hardware and networking to executing and securing transactions in cyberspace." Each story includes a glossary of terms put together by a team of O'Reilly editors: Shane Warden, Kurt Cagle, Timothy M. O'Brien, and James Turner. The stories and glossaries aim to help "entrepreneurs and their employees make smart technology decisions and purchases, communicate more effectively with in-house information technology staff and, ultimately, please their customers." Read on to learn more.

A week ago Adobe began shipping Photoshop CS4 and already Deke McClelland's highly anticipated Adobe Photoshop CS4 One-on-One is climbing bestselling charts. Even better, dekePod's special Halloween episode sheds light on CS4's scariest feature, the Masks palette. "It's kind of cute, but it's got a big old knife," notes Deke. Watch dekePod now to find out how to transform the Masks palette from, in Deke's own words, "a devil doll to a responsible citizen."

As some of you may know, one of our authors, Mikkel Aaland, recently returned from a trip to Tasmania with a group of photographers and a team from Adobe. Below are tips & tricks regarding Photoshop Lightroom 2, as well as Mikkel's reflection on the trip.

Tomorrow's the big day for you guys--opening day of Maker Faire Austin! Which means today is the big day for all of us -- setting up booths, building tables, hanging signs, and watching everything take shape so you can have the best experience possible. Check out O'Reilly's User Group Flickr account for more pictures as the weekend's events continue.

Our office is buzzing with excitement as people pack up and head out to Maker Faire Austin. It's a weekend packed with adventure and surprises -- until you've experienced it you can't describe it -- and even then sometimes it's hard! From crafts to fire to demos and robots, there's something for everyone