In early summer 2011, Nature Publishing Group's Educational branch debuted its "born digital" textbook Principles of Biology, which would cost the student only $49 and contribute to the movement to democratize higher education with technology. Nature's approach was so different that it basically destroyed the old business model of publishing and rebuilt it for the digital age.

Today, Nature Education has made the Principles of Biology available to the education world at large. The e-textbook is available either as a one-time purchase of $49 for individual students (which includes lifetime updates,) or it is available to learning institutions as a site license, which gives on-site access to all students coming from the school's IP address.

If you’ve ever tried to figure out your PC’s NTFS folder permissions with the standard Explorer tools then you’ll know it can take a while. The basic details are a few clicks away, even the advanced tools don’t tell you everything you need to know, and if you need to check several folders then you’ll have to right-click each one of them individually: very tedious.

Fortunately there is now an interesting alternative, though, in the NTFS Permissions Reporter.

It has taken rather a long time, but the stalwart of file compression,WinZip, has finally released a version of their famous archive handling tool for iPhone and iPad. Available completely free of charge, the app can be used to open compressed files and preview their contents, and while the restrictions of iOS mean that this is not as complete a compression tool as many people would hope, WinZip for iOS is still a welcome addition to the App Store.

Where the app proves particularly useful is in the way it enables you to view zip files that have been emailed to you. Whether you are working with the email accounts you have configured in the mail app, or you are using a web based service such as Gmail or Hotmail, the app can be used to view the contents of zip file attachments. It does not matter if the zip files you want to view are encrypted; providing you have the necessary password, these can be opened as well.

Protecting yourself from web-borne malware can often be something of a hassle. Especially if the process involves browser toolbars, which can slow you down and make your system more unstable.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. And the new Mirage Anti-Bot is a great example of a simpler, more lightweight approach.

Has Apple finally admitted Mac OS X has a malware problem? If you consider the implications of its Gatekeeper feature within v10.8 "Mountain Lion", the answer is yes.

Apple finally admits (although in a roundabout way) that malware exists for Mac. "While malware is one of the biggest security challenges on personal computers, it’s hardly an issue on a Mac", Apple says on a page describing Gatekeeper. "Apple is working hard to see that it won’t be".

Can’t wait for the summer release of Mountain Lion, the next version of OS X? If so, then you might be interested to learn that while developers are getting their hands on a preview version of Mountain Lion, humble users like you and me can get a glimpse into one of its new features right now.

That’s right, if you’re a Lion user who’s nicely updated to OS X 10.7.3, you can try out a beta of Apple Messages, Mountain Lion’s successor to the iChat application.

Today, without fanfare, prior notice or even a rumor on the InterWebs, Apple announced OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion's summer availability, released a developer preview and made available, as public beta, Messages, one of the new features. Suddenly, the year's schedule of software releases is a dramatic showdown between Mountain Lion and Windows 8 and Windows on ARM. Can you say cat fight?

Microsoft plans to release Windows 8 Consumer Preview later this month, with an official event planned for February 29 during Mobile World Congress. Many Microsoft watchers presume the venue's choice foreshadows increased emphasis on mobile features, particularly as the Redmond, Wash.-based company seeks to recover momentum against iPad. Apple isn't waiting around, boasting about OS X 10.8 inheriting mobile features from iOS 5 (on iPad) and tightening ties to iCloud. Mountain Lion also will likely release ahead of either Windows 8 or Windows ARM, increasing pressure on Microsoft to ship this year.

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) on Thursday released a study about the consumer imaging market which shows yet again that smartphones are decimating the point and shoot camera market.

55 percent of users in the study said they considered a point and shoot camera to be their primary image capture device, and only 18 percent considered their smartphone to be their primary photographic device.

"Smartphone volumes during the quarter rose due to record sales of Apple iPhones". That's a helluva statement -- from Gartner's press release on Q4 2011 handset sales today. Emphasis on sales, which is what the analyst firm measures, not shipments into the channel like its competitors. One hundred-forty nine million smartphones sold globally during the quarter, up 47.3 percent year over year, 35.46 million from Apple.

Last month, Apple claimed 37.04 million iPhone sales, which, of course, really means shipments. Apple's stunning fourth quarter raised its ranking. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company passed LG to take third place in overall handset sales for all 2011 -- not just smartphones -- 5 percent to 4.9 percent share, respectively. In smartphones, Apple claimed top spot for the quarter and all 2011, with 23.8 percent and 19 percent market share, respectively. Apple sold 89.7 million handsets last year.

I have to ask, because Microsoft is prepping Windows 8 Consumer Preview for release later this month and Windows on ARM for more limited testing. Both operating systems will, in Metro, use similar UI motif as that on Windows Phone. Is it really the best choice? Not having used Windows Phone, I have no answer. So I turn to you.

"Boring" is a word I've seen used to describe Windows Phone, here in BetaNews comments and on some mobile device forums -- that user excitement, because of the tile-like user interface's fluidity and simplicity, diminishes over time. In that scenario, Microsoft's "glance-and-go" design philosophy takes on different meaning: People get off the phone because they can't stand using it, rather than being empowered to live life instead of on the device.

If you were after a hard disk management package, then Paragon’s Hard Disk Manager 11 Suite was one of the picks of 2011, packed with functionality, and including something to handle all your partitioning, backup, cloning, defrag and system recovery needs.

We weren’t entirely sure how much scope there was for improvement in the upcoming Hard Disk Manager 12 Suite, then. But we were interested to find out, and so when Paragon Software offered us an exclusive first look we eagerly installed and launched a pre-release build.

Following the company's debut of new Solid State Drives (SSDs) yesterday, California-based flash storage company SanDisk made two announcements on Wednesday pertaining to the software side of the company's solid state drive business.

First, SanDisk announced that it had acquired FlashSoft, and second that it has formed an exclusive partnership with Diskeeper Corp for SSD software solutions. Both announcements cover similar ground, but span the consumer and enterprise settings.

Tweaking and performance boosting tools for Windows are not exactly difficult to come by, and there are countless free tools available. With the proliferation of free software, you may wonder why you would want to spend money on a program that claims to improve the performance of your computer. Take Ashampoo WinOptimizer 9 for a test run and we think you’ll find that it is worth parting with your cash for -- it will even provide you with proof that it is doing its job.

Performance enhancing software often makes all sorts of claims about what can be achieved, but Ashampoo WinOptimizer puts its money where its mouth is and provides you with benchmarking options so you can test performance before and after and see what difference it makes. You can get as hands-on as your feel comfortable with, or you can take advantage of the various one-click optimization options that have been designed to automate many common tasks. If you’ve tried system boosting software in the past and have wondered if any speed benefits you notice are for real or just the result of the placebo effect, the benchmarks available here should speak for themselves

Did you think that the marriage of Motorola and Google meant your pre-Ice Cream Sandwich Moto device would see an update quicker? Wrong. The company on Wednesday updated its upgrade roadmap for devices slated to receive the new software, and some devices available here in the United States could wait up until a year for ICS (Android 4.0). Imagine the outcry if Apple had an upgrade cycle like this.

The issue of device obsolescence plays a role at that point. Furthermore, with Jellybean probably not too far off, software obsolescence may also come into play -- your upgrade may be out-of-date the day it comes out.

Symantec Software has released version 6.0 of its all-in-one security, backup and system maintenance tool. Norton 360 offers the same security engine as Norton Internet Security 2012, but also includes backup and system tuneup tools as well.

Version 6.0 adds support for Windows 8, a number of features added in Norton 2012, including Identity Safe and Norton Management, plus improved navigation for backups and automatic error recovery.