The first American Magazine Vanguard Awards recognizes magazines that are innovating, extending their brands, and finding new exciting ways to connect with their customers. And O'Reilly Media's Make snared an AMVA award because of the creation of Maker Faire, which celebrates DIYers and crafters of every persuasion. "Considering that some of the greatest leaps forward in American technological history have been scrappy homebrews (Apple Computer was a literal garage start-up), it's really kind of exciting to think that, given its explosive growth, the Maker Faire might well help along an invention or two that's truly important," writes Simon Dumenco. Read on to find out more about Maker Faire Austin, which opens Oct. 18.

Dr. Gary Rost Bradski and Adrian Kaehler, the creators of OpenCV, have put their knowledge into a new book for O'Reilly. With Learning OpenCV: Computer Vision with the OpenCV Library developers and hobbyists can learn how to build simple or sophisticated vision applications. Over the next few days Gary--a consulting professor at Stanford, senior scientist at Willow Garage, a robotics institute research institute/incubator, and vision team leader for Stanley, the Stanford robot that won the DARPA Grand Challenge autonomous race across the desert--shares his Top Tips and Tricks for getting the most out of OpenCV. Read on for Tip #7: OpenCV and the Robot Operating System (ROS) (especially if you aim to be a robotic God!)

Is Subversion the right tool? "If you need to archive old versions of files and directories, possibly resurrect them, or examine logs of how they've changed over time, then Subversion is exactly the right tool for you." So write the authors of O'Reilly's Version Control with Subversion, 2nd Ed.--C. Michael Pilato, Ben Collins-Sussman, and Brian Fitzpatrick. And here, these members of the Subversion development team give you their top tips for avoiding the pesky network round-trip, safely moving files and directories with wild abandon, teaching your Subversion client to add certain properties to your files automatically, and more. Check them out.

The author of Learning Flex 3, Alaric Cole, has been working with Flash technologies since the introduction of ActionScript. But once Flex burst on the scene, he started focusing of Flex development. Recently Alaric put together a list of the top 10 things he thinks everyone should know about Flex. So whether you're considering using Flex for your personal site or business, read on to find out what Alaric thinks you should know.

Enough to wear it on your body? Leif Madsen, one of the authors of Asterisk: The Future of Telephony sports the animal from the cover of his book on the back of his leg. Now, that's commitment! Read more.

King, founder of GraphicReporter.com, chief evangelist of iStockphoto.com, and author of our forthcoming Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual recently posted her thoughts on some of Photoshop CS4's new features and tools. Photoshop aficionados can look forward to some big changes that may take some getting used to. Will they like them? "For the most part, the answer is a resounding yes," says King.

Are you or your offspring struggling to pass the AP Physics B exam? Is your college physics class giving you a headache? Or do you wish you understood how the world around you really works? Frankly it's been a while since I've taken a physics course. That's why I gave our newest release, Head First Physics, to our high school intern, Dylan Field, to check out. Read on to find out what Dylan had to say about our new guide to algebra-based mechanics and practical physics.

Interested in how to become an author for O'Reilly? One way is to make your opinions known on GetSatisfaction! Read more to see how author Rich Rosen both suggested and helped write the newest edition of Mac OS X for Unix Geeks. Also, enter to win a copy of the book!

According to Nancy Duarte, author of slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations, we're often afraid to unleash our natural storytelling instincts because we're afraid to be different—afraid to stand out from our corporate norm. And this leads to presentations that put our audiences to sleep—or worse—fail to communicate the information that we hope to convey. In her recent webcast, You are a Natural Born (Visual) Storyteller, Nancy showed the audience how to infuse life, intelligence, and good design into their presentations. The recording is now ready for viewing. Read on.

With eight new books and video lessons in the works, O'Reilly's authors are ready to help you make the leap to CS4. October brings the first of Deke McClelland's four new One-on-One titles, Adobe Photoshop CS4 One-on-One, as well as the newest installment in the Companion series--The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers by writer, teacher, and professional photographer Derrick Story. Deke joins this list of bestselling Digital Media and Missing Manuals authors--including iStockphoto evangelist Lesa Snider King--who is busily working on her own book, Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual. Indeed, O'Reilly's got the tailored resources about CS4 for every type of user, from professional designers and digital photographers to the DIY crowd.