GarageBand 2: The Missing Manual -- Now revised to reflect GarageBand's latest features, this authoritative, witty guide provides you with all the know-how you need to produce commercial-quality musical recordings entirely on your own. This top-selling book by David Pogue explains how to maximize the program's entire set of tools, including pre-recorded loops, sampled sounds, and live recordings. Easy-to-understand language makes it ideal for serious musicians and novices alike.

Photoshop Retouching Cookbook for Digital Photographers -- This book tells you everything you need to know to adjust, correct, retouch, and manipulate your photographs, without making you first learn everything there is to know about Photoshop CS2. These straightforward, easy-to-follow recipes cover everything from fixing problems with exposure, color, and focus to hand-tinting, adjusting lighting, adding special effects, and restoring faded and damaged photos.

Linux Made Easy (No Starch) -- Based on Xandros 3 (included), this book is a step-by-step, project-based guide that will make it easier than ever for you to join the world of Linux. It concentrates on subjects of most interest to the average home user: installation, using the internet, playing CDs and audio files, using scanners, working with digital cameras and images, games, downloading software and fonts, USB storage devices, PDAs, printing, internet telephony, and more.

RT Essentials -- This comprehensive guide shows you how to customize RT to better fit your organization's business needs. After introducing you to what ticketing systems are, the book shows you how to install and configure RT. From there, it explains how to perform simple tasks that will turn your RT server into a highly useful tracking tool. Sample Chapter 3, Getting Started (PDF), is available free online.

Making Music on the Apple Mac (PC Publishing) -- Making music on the Mac is now easier than ever. This book provides advice on setting up your studio and configuring your audio and MIDI interfaces for optimum performance. Step-by step projects show you how to record with GarageBand, and when your masterpiece is complete, learn how to organize your music, create playlists, burn CDs, and publish your music on the net.

XSLT 1.0 Pocket Reference -- This handy pocket guide quickly gets you up to speed on XSLT so you can convert XML like a seasoned pro. It covers topics such as stylesheet structure, template rules, result trees, conditional processing, number formatting, and more. Best of all, its concise approach saves you time, aggravation, and effort. Sample Chapter 3, How XSLT Works, (PDF) is available free online.

Essential Business Process Modeling -- This guide gathers all the concepts, design, architecture, and standard specifications of Business Process Management (BPM) into one concise book, and offers hands-on examples that illustrate BPM's approach to process notation, execution, administration, and monitoring. You'll also learn about BPM design patterns and best practices, as well as underlying theory. Sample Chapter 2, Prescription for a Good BPM Architecture (PDF), is available free online.

Stealing the Network: How to Own an Identity (Syngress) -- The first two books in this series have become classics in the hacker and infosec communities because of their chillingly realistic depictions of criminal hacking techniques. In this third installment, the all-star cast of authors tackle one of the fastest growing crimes in the world: identity theft. Now, the criminal hackers, who readers have grown to both love and hate, try to cover their tracks and vanish into thin air.

FrontPage 2003: The Missing Manual -- This book puts FrontPage 2003's features in context, with clear and thorough chapters that provide valuable shortcuts, workarounds, and just plain common sense, no matter where you weigh in on the technical scale. You will learn to build web pages, simple or sophisticated, and find out how to manage and publish your website. You'll also learn to create forms, work with databases, and integrate FrontPage with Microsoft Office. Sample Chapter 7, Cascading Style Sheets (PDF), is available free online.

No Nonsense XML Web Development with PHP (SitePoint) -- Practical and concise, this book teaches XML from the ground up and explains how XML can be put to use in real-world projects. Written in a tutorial style, it presents various XML methodologies and techniques in an easy-to-understand way, building a basis for further exploration. This book also covers buzz topics such as RSS and Web Services.

Eclipse IDE Pocket Guide -- This practical pocket guide covers basic Eclipse concepts as well as features that are not commonly understood, such as Perspectives and Launch Configurations. You'll learn how to write and debug your Java code and how to integrate that code with tools such as Ant and JUnit. You'll also get a collection of tips and tricks to handle common tasks in your Java development cycle. Sample Chapter 6, Tips and Tricks (PDF), is available free online.

What Is Visual Studio -- What can you really do with Visual Studio? James Avery discusses some of the various applications you can build, some of its most compelling development features, and what you need to know to get started writing quality applications in Visual Studio. James is the author of Visual Studio Hacks.

EuroOSCON Early Registration Extended -- Join us for the first annual O'Reilly European Open Source Convention, October 17-20 in Amsterdam. EuroOSCON targets the specific needs of European developers, programmers, strategists, entrepreneurs, and technologists, helping them to deliver the benefits of open source technology to their companies and organizations. Sign up now and save before early registration prices end on September 21st.

Linux for Video Production -- Linux is traditionally good for developers and system administrators, and recently good for business users. When will it be good for multimedia users? A handful of projects are making video production and editing possible (and useful), PiTiVi and GStreamer among them. Jono Bacon examines the present and future of video production with Linux and open source software. Jono is the coauthor of Linux Desktop Hacks.

Web Programming Certificate Series Special -- The O'Reilly Learning Lab Web Programming Certificate Series can take you from web newbie to well-rounded web engineer in six courses, which span everything from JavaScript to XML, Perl to Linux/Unix, HTML to mySQL. Upon completion of the series, students receive a Certificate of Professional Development from the University of Illinois Office of Continuing Education. From now until September 21st, enroll in all six courses and receive a $200 instant rebate.

Identity Management Architectures and Digital Identity -- Building an identity management infrastructure requires a strategy, one that takes into account not only the technology but the politics and economics surrounding digital identity. Phil Windley calls such a strategy an identity management architecture, or IMA. Here, he defines what an IMA is and discusses the key components and myths to developing one. Phil is the author of Digital Identity.

Computer Privacy Annoyances: Privacy at Home -- Like charity, privacy begins at home. Today, privacy annoyances abound thanks to your telephone, mailbox, fax machine, cellphone, and so on. Perhaps worst of all, poor privacy practices could lead to the theft of your personal identity—-and a world of hurt for your reputation and credit rating. Feeling paranoid yet? Reading Chapter 2 of Computer Privacy Annoyances proves that knowledge is power. If you like this chapter, read the whole book (and up to nine others) on Safari with a free trial subscription.

How to Decide What Bugs to Fix When, Part 1 -- There are two challenges to making smart bug decisions: first, understanding how to make good bug-fix decisions; and second, creating and following rules that make it easy to stick to those decisions when the pressure is high. In this first installment of a two-part essay, Scott Berkun provides the core ideas you need to make your own bug-fixing rules. Scott is the author of The Art of Project Management.

What Is the GNOME Desktop -- Nope, it's not some elfish paperweight for the home office. GNOME is a desktop software environment designed to look familiar to anyone who has ever used a computer. Aaron Weber distills what the GNOME desktop is, what apps users will find as well as what platform development tools developers will find, and the resources to help you get started using it. Aaron is a coauthor of Linux in a Nutshell, 5th Edition.

Hacking Swing with Undocumented Classes and Properties -- Joshua Marinacci shows you six undocumented features, classes, and properties that let you hack into Swing. From how to hide a frame from the Windows task bar to how to make Mac OS X windows truly transparent, these undocumented hacks can add a level of polish that will make your apps stand out from the rest. Joshua is the coauthor of Swing Hacks.

Cisco Titles Now on SafariU -- SafariU is happy to announce the addition of 165 new titles from Cisco Press, the only Cisco Systems-authorized publisher of books for Cisco certification study and network technology learning. From integrated voice and data networks to routers, IP telephony, and a host of certification guides, Cisco Press brings more essential course material to the SafariU library. To learn more and sign up for access, visit SafariU.

Localization in ASP.NET 2.0 -- The web is an international place. Why shouldn't your websites be ready for international visitors? With the introduction of ASP.NET 2.0, Microsoft aims to make it easy to localize your website for individual users, no matter where they hail from. Wei-Meng Lee shows you how you can localize your ASP.NET 2.0 web applications. Wei-Meng is the author of ASP.NET 2.0: A Developer's Notebook.

Ten Tips for Improving Your Podcasts -- Jack Herrington offers his top ten suggestions for creating great podcasts. He starts with the basics: reducing noise, getting a good microphone, proper microphone technique, show prep, and format, and closes with tips that deal with improving the content of your show. Jack is the author of Podcasting Hacks.