Ever since Google released its two operating systems -- the one for computers and the one for phones and tablets -- users have talked of a merger of the two. So far that hasn't happened, and at Google I/O today it still didn't. But things got a bit cozier.

The company unveiled closer integration between the two platforms, bringing phone notifications to your computer. Is your phone ringing? Your Chromebook will popup a notice telling you who it is. Got a text message? That too will appear on your notebook. In fact, Chromebooks will even notify you of low battery life on your mobile device, letting you know it's time to charge it.

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As expected, one of the big new announcements at Google’s I/O conference was Android Auto which takes Google’s mobile operating system into vehicles.

Android Auto runs on your smartphone but the apps and features are mirrored and can be controlled through a touchscreen in the vehicle. The car-specific interface is a simplified version of the forthcoming (and unnamed) Android L release, with larger less distracting 'touch targets'.

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At I/O 2014 Google announced that more cloud storage will be made available to space hungry users. Google Drive for Work has a price tag of $10 per month and includes not just more cloud storage, but unlimited cloud storage. Well, there is one limitation; individual files cannot exceed 5TB, but this is, for all intents and purposes, a deal that is unlimited by most people's understanding of the word. As the name suggests, this is a product that is aimed at businesses, but at this price it is hard to imagine that there won’t be swathes of home users looking to take advantage of the package.

A few months back, Google slashed the cost of its cloud storage packages, but today's news is something quite different. Worries about security may be allayed by the news that Drive, Gmail and Calendar data will be encrypted at data centers. IT admins will also be able to audit and control options, that means internal security policies can be implemented as required.

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Some people say Google is better than Bing, and maybe they are right. However, that is a subjective statement. What they really mean to say is that Google is better for them. In reality they are both great search engines with different pros and cons. My favorite aspect of Microsoft's search engine is Bing Rewards -- a program that rewards users for searching. Hell, if you are searching anyways, why not get rewarded?

Sadly, Microsoft released a Bing Rewards app for Android and iOS, but not its own Windows Phone platform. This was hugely disappointing for users of Microsoft's mobile operating system, including myself. Today, Microsoft levels the playing field and makes it available for Windows Phone too.

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We've seen this before. Washington DC proving time and again its lack of knowledge about the modern technological world. We witnessed it when Ted Stephens, in a speech to congress, famously referred to the internet as "a series of tubes". Most recently, we've had to deal with the FCC looking to put an end to Net Neutrality -- see John Oliver's description for the best explanation on that. The latter is more likely less about knowledge and more about being in the pockets of cable company lobbyists.

Now the latest blow has been dealt. The Supreme Court has handed down its decision on Aereo. If you aren't familiar, Aereo is, or perhaps was, a TV provider which was moving into various cities around the US. If it was in your market, you could "rent" an antenna which picked up over-the-air (OTA) broadcasts. The company then retransmitted this to the customer via an internet connection. Each customer rented his or her own dime-sized antenna.

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In recent days we've seen DDoS attacks hit some major names like Feedly and even force the CodeSpaces hosting service out of business.

In a bid to combat the threat presented by DDoS attacks, security specialist Corero Network Security has announced a powerful web-based analytics portal.

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Photos give us a window to the world -- our own experiences can only show us so much. Photos give us a richness of experience and perspective that we would otherwise be devoid of. The sudden existence of billions of smart phones, which take trillions of photos and videos per year, has given us the biggest increase we’ve seen yet in rich user data -- and now we have the technology to start to make sense of that data.

With this new technology, it’s now possible to analyze photos for myriad applications. For example, at Jetpac we use 100s of millions of travel photos shared on Instagram to develop the Jetpac City Guides app, and do object recognition on the photos to be able to recommend places such as restaurants with patios (from the blue skies in the photos), hipster bars (by the unusually high number of mustaches we spot in photos), and the best coffee shops (from the highest proportion of latte art in photos). We've also now developed deep learning AI technology to broaden our ability to be able to recognize all objects in photos. Putting deep learning on the iPhone (Spotter by Jetpac) means we can now recognize many objects from the iPhone's real-time video feed, locally on the phone. Having minimized the technology significantly, we also have room to allow you to train the phone to recognize a specific object (Deep Belief by Jetpac).

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As the month draws to a close, Piriform issues its regular update to its freeware Windows cleaning utility with the releases of CCleaner 4.15 and CCleaner Portable 4.15.

Highlights in the latest release include support for the forthcoming 64-bit build of Google Chrome, plus an improved secure wipe algorithm as well as memory and architecture optimizations.

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A new report from SEO and content marketing specialist BrightEdge reveals that although almost 60 percent of American adults own smartphones and 40 percent own tablets, more than a quarter of websites aren’t mobile friendly.

This leads to a massive loss of potential traffic and if marketers rectify this misconfiguration, the report discovered they stand to boost smartphone traffic by 200 percent.

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The Surface Pro 3 is an amazing computer -- one that I highly recommend. It can be your full-time laptop, tablet and desktop too. Yes, there are less expensive computers, but if you can afford it, don't you deserve it? Unfortunately, in these tough economic times, not everyone can afford a new computer. Between utility bills and the rising cost of gasoline for your car, there is not as much money to go around. College students in particular are aware of these woes, struggling to afford the high costs of education, while eating ramen soup.

Luckily, it seems Microsoft understands these issues and wants you to have a Surface Pro 3 anyway. No, the company isn't just giving them away -- the tech giant is having a sweepstakes in conjunction with Skype and you can possibly win one. Interested? Read on.

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It's a big day for Google as the search giant's annual developer conference kicks off with what promises to be a very exciting keynote.

So what can we expect Google to unveil later today? Well it’s a good bet we’ll be treated to news of Android 5.0 Lollipop (or some other sweet beginning with L -- Liquorice, Lemon Meringue Pie, Lion Bar, or Lifesavers are possibilities too). Hardware that might be announced include a new Nexus 10, the Nexus 8, Google Android Wear watches, Google Project Tango tablets, the modular Project Ara smartphone, the Google Auto Link in-car system, and a set top box to rival Apple TV.

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Backup specialist Acronis has unveiled Acronis True Image for Mac 1.0, a brand new build of its well-known drive imaging software for Macs running OS X 10.8 or later.

The new release is described by Acronis as offering "dual-protection data backup" for Mac, a reference to its ability to back up to both local drives -- including network attached devices -- and the cloud through its own Acronis Cloud service.

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Microsoft has realized that the only way to get more vendors to embrace Windows Phone is to make it easier for them to release Windows Phones. And that decision is paying off if its most-recent partnerships are of any indication.

Allview and Hisense, two vendors that target specific markets using low-cost devices, are now supporting the platform. The former, a Romanian company, has unveiled two new Windows Phones while the latter, which is based in China, has teased its newfound affinity for the tiled smartphone operating system on microblogging site Sina Weibo.

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A cloned banking app which steals user login credentials has been discovered on the Play Store this week. Mobile security company Lookout discovered the app and informed Google which immediately removed it.

The malware, called BankMirage, targets the customers of an Israeli bank called Mizrahi Bank -- the fourth largest in the country. The authors of the app placed a wrapper around the bank's legitimate app and redistributed it on the Google Play store, pretending to be the financial institution.

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Inhance Technology commissioned iReach Insights to conduct a comparative survey of 2,000 mobile users in the US and UK; the surprise was not so much the differences but similarities in attitudes.

The headline story is that US users (27 percent) are more worried than 12 months ago than their UK counterparts (21 percent) about being mugged for their device. However, from a mobile security perspective, the more interesting data is contained in the body of the research.

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