There can be few of us who don’t rely on a todo list of one form or another to manage our increasingly hectic schedules -- and there are certainly plenty of tools to choose from. To help juggle deadlines and manage my time, I've long relied on Any.do, starting off with the iOS app and then migrating to the Android version and Chrome extension. Now there's a new tool to play with: the Any.do Chrome App.

Google recently celebrated Chrome's fifth anniversary with a push of apps for the browser, and Any.do is just the latest big name to find itself included in the For Your Desktop section of the Chrome Web Store. As there was already an extension available, what’s the point of a separate Chrome App?

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Today Bump becomes the latest addition to Google's portfolio. In a blog post, Bump CEO David Lieb reveals that the company has been acquired by the search giant. Bump is known for two tools -- the eponymous Bump file transfer service, and Flock for sharing photos.

But it is the Bump transfer app that is most famous, making it possible to shift files from one device to another with a gimmicky bump together -- using "a matching algorithm" rather than NFC. The blog post assures users that "Bump and Flock will continue to work as they always have for now", and it is the "for now" part of this announcement that is intriguing. Google has yet to make an announcement of its own, so it is not yet clear whether Bump's tools will live on under the same name, get rebranded, or disappear into Google's fat folds.

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When it comes to Android, bigger is usually better. Bigger screens, improved specs, more features -- experience is often an afterthought. The wonderful Moto X was the first Android device in recent memory that had the user focused on the experience rather than the specs. However, some users will still want the biggest and baddest device and that is where the Droid Maxx comes in. You can't review the Maxx without comparing it to the X, so the question becomes, which is better?

By the end of this review, I hope to have an answer for you. After all, on paper, the Maxx has a bigger screen, bigger battery, and wireless charging while retaining the voice interaction of the Moto X. Surely the Maxx is better right? Read on...

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Today, at the Intel Developer Forum, Google and OEM partners unveiled plans to release new Chromebooks using Haswell chips. That means long battery life, on the order of MacBook Air, for a fraction of the price. Six top OEMs will produce Chromebooks, which isn't the best news for Microsoft and Windows 8.1. ASUS and Toshiba join Acer, HP, Lenovo and Samsung.

"Intel’s latest processors consume less power to improve battery life by more than 2X over previous generations, while offering increased performance", Caesar Sengupta, Google's Chromebook product manager, claims. "This means these new Chromebooks can last all day so you can focus on getting things done".

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Google faces claims for damages from people who had personal data collected from their wireless networks as the company gathered information for its Street View service. Google had previously claimed that emails, usernames and passwords had been collected unintentionally, but the appeal ruling means that the company is not exempt from liability under the federal Wiretap Act.

Back in 2010, Google admitted that data such as network SSIDs and MAC addresses were collected along with photos. In this blog post the company denied that it pulled "payload data" (essentially the data that is being sent over the networks) but it was later revealed that "Google did indeed collect (and store) this information from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks". A full report is available to read online. Google was required to delete this data, and indeed did so.

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Google's unofficial motto has long been 'do no evil' and the company is keen to be seen to stick to it. Jumping into bed with Nestle may have raised a few eyebrows and rattled a few cages, but in a blog post, Richard Salgado, Director of Law Enforcement & Information Security, and Pablo Chavez, Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs show the search giant is eager to stay on the right side of customers.

Google has filed petition in the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court asking that they be allowed to publish details of FISA orders. The petition is very similar to others that we have seen in recent months in the wake of the NSA surveillance revelations, and is really just a follow-up to the We Need To Know letter from back in July in which a number of leading companies wrote to, amongst others, President Obama to "urge greater transparency around national security-related requests".

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Because there's more to life than books, you know, Google unleashed Music All Access on us back in May of this year, going head-to-head with rivals such as Spotify, Rdio and Pandora, and combining this with all of your own music stored for free on the search giant's servers. My colleague Brian Fagioli called the new service a game-changer and today that contest alters a bit more.

Google is quietly rolling out an update to All Access that enhances the Pandora-like feature in the service. Personalized radio stations allow customers to enter an artist, or multiple ones, to create a station that plays music of the same type. However, for those who would like to simplify this process, Google Music now offers genre stations -- if you wish to listen to just Alternative, well, now you can.

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Google is renowned for its lack of Windows Phone support. The search giant has only released one app for the tiled smartphone operating system, and that is basically just a portal to the mobile Google Search page. Windows Phone users get none of the popular apps launched on Android or iOS -- YouTube, Gmail, Google Drive or Google Now. That doesn't look like it will change in the near future, unless Windows Phone's market share is significant enough for the company to notice (which is a far-fetched scenario anyway).

Sadly, Google also shows its lack of Windows Phone support at browser level. Those who wish to access the Gmail website from a handset running the tiled OS are greeted with a plain ugly interface, while Android, iOS and even BlackBerry users get treated to the latest smartphone-optimized design. As a Windows Phone user I had hoped that this would change, but it looks like Google has other plans in mind, as, surprisingly, it considers the tiled smartphone OS to be of the feature phone kind.

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With the launch of a new iPhone on the horizon you can almost sense the forming of a queue each time you go past an Apple store. But Apple isn't the only company with new products either already launched or in the pipeline. In fact 2013 has been something of a bumper year for technology releases.

The FinancesOnline website has produced a handy infographic showing this year's stand-out gadgets and those that are still to come. In the smartphone market most of the interest was at the top end. HTC and Sony joined the premium smartphone battle with new products this year with the Google Nexus 5 still to come.

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I once spent a fun evening drinking in an LA hotel bar with the Sex Pistols. It was the 90s and the iconic group had reformed for a series of lucrative gigs and were in the city for rehearsals. John Lydon was in excellent form, as always.

Despite being the best known of the seventies punk bands, The Sex Pistols were never my favorite group -- I always preferred The Clash (with The Damned close behind). I told Lydon this and he laughed and spat on the floor. He spent a lot of that evening spitting on the floor, and my shoes.

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Google+ is a great social media service for people to interact with friends and strangers alike. However, much like fellow social media sites Facebook and Twitter, it also serves as a great tool for bloggers and writers.

Yesterday, Google announced that it is bolstering its social media service with new features aimed at authors of blogs and news sites -- author attribution and embedded posts.

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Android is my mobile operating system of choice. While I am unhappy with the new KitKat name for 4.4, I still generally enjoy the OS very much. I like that Android uses the Linux Kernel and is more open than iOS.

However, there are five aspects of the operating system that I simply hate or find unnecessary. Read on for my choices, which like all good lists, are presented in reverse order...

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Looking at the biggest stories on BetaNews from September, 1 - 7, 2013. This was a week packed with news from IFA in Berlin -- lots of big announcements to whet our appetites for the coming months. LG's G Pad was revealed as a potential competitor to the Nexus 7 and iPad mini, while Acer was found to be proudly showing off its new R7 notebook complete with innovative Ezel hinge that allows for a range of working positions.

IFA was also where Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Note 3 as well as the Galaxy Gear smartwatch which will allow us all to live out our Star Trek dreams. It wasn't long before Note 3 pre-orders were being taken. If you've noticed that phones are getting bigger and bigger, the same is certainly true of tablets -- the Panasonic Toughpad 4K is a staggering 20 inches from corner to corner.

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Unsurprisingly, Jelly Bean continues to increase its dominance in the green droid distribution charts, with the latest sweet in the family running on more than 45 percent of all Android devices visiting Google Play during the seven days ending September 4.

In the latest distribution charts, the first two Jelly Bean iterations -- Android 4.1 (36.6 percent) and Android 4.2 (8.5 percent) -- have a combined share of 45.1 percent, a number that is 4.7 percentage points higher compared to the previous data set that was released in early-August. A month ago, Jelly Bean had a 40.5 percent distribution level (34 percent for Android 4.1 and 6.5 percent for Android 4.2).

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On March 11, 2011 a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, but despite the extremely high intensity of the tremor itself, it was the resulting tsunami that caused the real damage. Most notable, and scary, was the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Now, two years after the tragedy that cost more than 15,000 people their lives, Google Maps, through Street View, takes users back into the teeth of this disaster.

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