Adobe LiveMotion offers Web animators a tremendous number of features, so getting up the learning curve can be a challenge for a new user. Sams Teach Yourself Adobe LiveMotion in 24 Hoursmight not teach you everything about LiveMotion in a day, but it certainly will take you a ways up the slope.

Written with the beginning Web designer in mind, Part I focuses on introducing LiveMotion and its tool set while educating you on how Web graphics work. But, while the author appropriately details the differences between GIF, JPEG, and PNG graphic-image formats, LiveMotion is a tool for creating vector-based animation for the Web, and the chapter "Understanding Web Graphics" makes no mention of the Flash, QuickTime (which LiveMotion doesn't utilize), or even animated GIF formats.

Parts II (Working with LiveMotion Objects), III (Color, Shape, and Style), and IV (Creating Static and Dynamic Images for the Web) detail use of the application itself, and Parts V and VI wrap up the book with examples of animation and multimedia, and designing and optimizing advanced Web presentations.

Although LiveMotion is primarily an animator's tool, this book takes a different approach to it, looking at and using it as if it were a Web designer's tool. Interesting chapters about creating rollovers and using LiveMotion for page compositing illustrate this, as do 22 pages on setting type. Meanwhile, the whole section on creating animation in LiveMotion is just over 20 pages long.

An inexpensive book, Sams Teach Yourself Adobe LiveMotion in 24 Hoursdoesn't have an accompanying CD-ROM or any color illustrations, which makes chapter 10, "Getting Colorful," somewhat theoretical. The book as a whole reads more like a reference manual than a tutorial, but the detailed index will help you find what you need quickly.

For people who need to learn from structured tutorials, there are other books. For those who like to create things on their own and need only a reference book with examples, this one is a good choice. —Mike Caputo

Owen Linzmayer's Apple Confidentialis subtitled The Real Story of Apple Computer, Inc., and while nobody will ever know the complete, "real" story about Apple, Linzmayer's is probably as close as they come. Having covered Apple news since 1980, he offers extensive insider details about Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, Gilbert Amelio, Bill Gates, and other major players whose lives were (and are) intertwined with Apple's history. And along the way, we also learn about lesser-known figures whose stories have remained hidden in the Apple myth: Ronald Gerald Wayne, for example, who was actually a partner with Wozniak and Jobs in the original incarnation of the company, but who sold his share when he realized he would be financially vulnerable if it should fail.

Linzmayer's tale does have a few drawbacks. Because he mixes a chronological narrative with chapters that focus on key points in the Apple story, he sometimes repeats himself. Case in point: the chapter "Big Bad Blunders" makes a great record of Apple's failures, but the story of the exploding Powerbook 5300s is duplicated at later points. Nonetheless, Apple Confidentialis rife with gems that will appeal to Apple fanatics and followers of the computer industry. Especially enjoyable are the revelation of "Easter eggs" that are hidden in several versions of the Mac operating system; the many screen shots, timelines, and telling quotes from Jobs, Gates, Wozniak and others that populate the margins and concluding sections of each chapter; the "Code Names Uncovered" section that makes public the monikers of several secret Apple projects; and Bill Gates's 1985 letter to John Sculley and Jean Louis Gassee pleading for Apple to license Mac technology and develop a "standard personal computer."—Patrick O'Kelley

In the early 1970s, while Silicon Valley was designing the latest generation of digital wristwatches and pocket calculators, a ragtag group of college dropouts, hippies, and electronics hobbyists were busy creating the future in their garages. What they built was the personal computer, but what they were aiming for was something much more ambitious: a revolution. Fire in the Valleyis the story of their efforts, and in particular, the contributions of an informal think tank called the Homebrew Computer Club. Its technically gifted community, comprising sci-fi aficionados and Berkeley counterculturists, believed computers could usher in an age of human empowerment, perhaps even a utopia.

The club's most famous member is Steve Jobs of Apple, whose story is told here, as is Bill Gates's, who was strongly influenced by Homebrew. What sets Fire in the Valleyapart from the many other books about early days at Apple and Microsoft, though, is its focus on the brilliant engineers and coders who built the foundation that would eventually support those two companies. They included ex-Berkley Barbeditor and hardware designer Lee Felsenstein, who was adamant about using computers for populist ends; Adam Osborne, who took PCs to the next level by making them portable; hacker legend John "Captain Crunch" Draper, who used telephony for his own mischievous purposes; and activist Ted Nelson, the Thom Paine of the computer revolution.

The cast of characters is sometimes tough to keep track of, and authors Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine have wisely included a graphic timeline in the first pages of the book that readers will find useful. It stretches from 1800 to 1999, encompassing events that have occurred since Fire in the Valley's original 1984 publication. This second edition includes new chapters and photographs to document the last 15 years, but they serve as more of an epilogue than a new act in this drama. The Homebrew Club's mark on personal computing history is cemented, and Fire in the Valleyis an engaging account of it, one that should inspire readers everywhere. —Demian McLean

On October 23, 2001, Apple Computer, a company known for its chic, cutting-edge technology — if not necessarily for its dominant market share — launched a product with an enticing promise: You can carry an entire music collection in your pocket. It was called the iPod. What happened next exceeded the company's wildest dreams. Over 50 million people have inserted the device's distinctive white buds into their ears, and the iPod has become a global obsession. The Perfect Thingis the definitive account, from design and marketing to startling impact, of Apple's iPod, the signature device of our young century.

Besides being one of the most successful consumer products in decades, the iPod has changed our behavior and even our society. It has transformed Apple from a computer company into a consumer electronics giant. It has remolded the music business, altering not only the means of distribution but even the ways in which people enjoy and think about music. Its ubiquity and its universally acknowledged coolness have made it a symbol for the digital age itself, with commentators remarking on "the iPod generation." Now the iPod is beginning to transform the broadcast industry, too, as podcasting becomes a way to access radio and television programming. Meanwhile millions of Podheads obsess about their gizmo, reveling in the personal soundtrack it offers them, basking in the social cachet it lends them, even wondering whether the device itself has its own musical preferences.

Steven Levy, the chief technology correspondent for Newsweekmagazine and a longtime Apple watcher, is the ideal writer to tell the iPod's tale. He has had access to all the key players in the iPod story, including Steve Jobs, Apple's charismatic cofounder and CEO, whom Levy has known for over twenty years. Detailing for the first time the complete story of the creation of the iPod, Levy explains why Apple succeeded brilliantly with its version of the MP3 player when other companies didn't get it right, and how Jobs was able to convince the bosses at the big record labels to license their music for Apple's groundbreaking iTunes Store. (We even learn why the iPod is white.) Besides his inside view of Apple, Levy draws on his experiences covering Napster and attending Supreme Court arguments on copyright (as well as his own travels on the iPod's click wheel) to address all of the fascinating issues — technical, legal, social, and musical — that the iPod raises.

Borrowing one of the definitive qualities of the iPod itself, The Perfect Thingshuffles the book format. Each chapter of this book was written to stand on its own, a deeply researched, wittily observed take on a different aspect of the iPod. The sequence of the chapters in the book has been shuffled in different copies, with only the opening and concluding sections excepted. "Shuffle" is a hallmark of the digital age — and The Perfect Thing, via sharp, insightful reporting, is the perfect guide to the deceptively diminutive gadget embodying our era.