Having recently attended Enterprise Apps World in June, I thought I would share my key takeaways from the show. It's clear that most organizations are looking at the implications of going mobile and are considering how enterprise apps will work within their mobile strategy.

IT teams are working to increase the productivity of their developers to build enterprise apps faster and more cost effectively, ensuring that they are multi-channel and built for mobile. As a result agile development is now a reality, and as an industry we have moved away from the old "waterfall" development days when big projects included long delivery times. Now businesses are looking for rapid response to change and incremental releases, as well as a time boxed development approach.

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There are countless ways to promote a product nowadays. The problem is fun and creativity are very much dead -- so many advertisements and promotions are simply yawn-worthy. This is a shame, particularly for the technology community, where nerds are abundant. If you aren't aware, nerds and geeks love nerdy and geeky things, so it is surprising that more companies do not embrace those interests.

Today, typically conservative Panasonic launches one of the coolest corporate, promotional, advertisements ever. You see, many computer nerds (including myself) are socially inept and uncool and this brought us down the path of something wonderful as children -- comic books! Yes, nerds and geeks love both comic books and computers so Panasonic is launching Unbreakable Valor (and it's actually good).

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Microsoft's continued updates of its latest console, the Xbox One, will keep going with a new August feature roll out, that is beginning today. There are many new things included that should keep gamers and entertainment aficionados satisfied.

Microsoft's Xbox Live chief Larry Hryb, who's better known as Major Nelson, made the official announcement, along with outlining the benefits for customers.

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A few weeks ago I complained bitterly about my atrocious internet connection. The impact of a deathly slow and unnervingly unstable connection is hard to overstate. Tension and frustration chez Wilson reached boiling point. Nerves were frayed and tempers short. But as I sank into the bleak, hellish broadband abyss, a hand reached out to save me. The hand was extended by the suitably named Satellite Internet who took pity on me having read of my plight. A trial of satellite broadband was duly offered, and I don’t think I could have said "yes, please" faster. It's something I've considered before, but the startup costs had put me off.

Satellite Internet's service uses Astra satellites, the same ones used to deliver satellite TV to Europe. This means that a smaller dish than you might expect is needed. Forget the monster installations you may have seen in people's gardens in years gone by, these days the dishes have shrunk to something that's just about the same size as those used for TV broadcasts. Installation was delayed due to my trip to the Isle of Skye (which, incidentally, has blisteringly fast internet considering it's a tiny island connected to the mainland with a small bridge), but this morning two installation engineers arrived at 8:00, having travelled more than two hours to reach me.

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The issue of internet freedom is seldom far from the news at the moment, but exactly how much are the governments in different countries restricting what their web users do?

Online privacy service IVPN has produced an interactive map showing levels of internet censorship around the world. You can simply click on a country to see how it rates.

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Say what you will about lawyers, but the profession is a necessity to protect the rights of citizens. Sure, there are some questionable ones that chase ambulances or advertise on late-night television, but there are many noble ones looking to prosecute bad guys and defend the innocent.

Whether a lawyer or any other law professional is noble or not, they need quality tools to research cases and archive documents. However, unlike other businesses, the law profession has some specific needs and requirements that other industries do not. And so, law professionals can't just buy a single software package and easily accomplish their goals. Today, Microsoft announces that this is changing with Matter Center for Office 365.

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E-Ink displays for smartphones are on the way after Oaxis’ InkCase+ concluded its Kickstarter campaign with over double the funding that it needed.

Oaxis’ 30-day campaign concluded with $207,073 raised from 1,516 backers and the original goal took under three hours to fall before it accelerated on to a level that saw two new rewards introduced for backers.

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We’re big fans of the Raspberry Pi here at BetaNews. The super-cheap credit card sized computer was created to help get kids back into programming, just as they did in schools in the 1980s and 1990s, but the ARM GNU/Linux board has found an appreciative audience outside of the education system, with over 3 million Pis sold since 2012.

Getting started with the device is easy enough, and there’s plenty of help and advice available on the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s website, but if you want a simple, straightforward guide then Manchester based NeoMam Studios has put together an infographic covering setting up, getting started and more.

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Although Windows has a reasonable set of command line tools, they’ve not changed much in recent years. Microsoft presumably hopes you’ll master PowerShell and build anything else you need for yourself.

Alternatively, you could just install EventSentry SysAdmin Tools, a free collection of 35+ (mostly) console-based programs to help you with various file system, network and monitoring tasks.

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For many organizations, bring your own device (BYOD) is now a fact of life. More than 70 percent of employees use their own smart phone or tablet to access corporate data. However this doesn't mean we should simply accept the trend and moving on. While many organizations have seen benefit in exploiting employees' willingness to invest their own money in mobility, others have seen a rise in cost and complexity.

The built-in assumption that organizations will save money under BYOD by sidestepping the cost of devices doesn't tell the whole story. The price of mobility goes beyond hardware and there are a number of hidden costs under BYOD that mobility managers need to grapple with.

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The Harvard school of engineering and applied sciences (SEAS) have created the "first thousand-robot flash mob". The swarm consists of 1,024 "kilobots" that collaborate and provide "a simple platform for the enactment of complex behaviors".

Michael Rubenstein, a research associate at SEAS, said "Biological collectives involve enormous numbers of cooperating entities -- whether you think of cells or insects or animals -- that together accomplish a single task that is a magnitude beyond the scale of any individual".

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As a Linux user and lover, I prefer Android smartphones to iOS. While I love the freedom and functionality of Google's mobile operating system, there is one thing I hate -- the UI. That is a pretty big deal and usually a deal-breaker for a consumer. However, I put up with the dreary UI and clunky app drawer because I can customize it with different launchers, wallpapers and icon packs. While this is passable, I long for a redesign to mimic something similar to iOS 7. I crave beauty and art, but alas, Google seems disinterested in doing anything radical -- Android L "Material Design" seems too safe and boring.

The design savior for many years has been the Chinese-born ROM, MIUI; however, as more and more devices ship with impossibly hard-to-hack locked bootloaders, the gorgeous ROM has not been ported to as many devices; even unofficially. And so, users have been limited to MIUI-styled launchers, but not the full experience. Excitingly, MIUI 6 is now released in beta form, but sadly, most Android users will not be able to flash the beta, or the final version for that matter. This locked bootloader nonsense is a tragedy, as MIUI 6 is sexy as hell and puts Google's vision of Android to shame.

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The August Update for Windows 8.1 (once rumored to be Update 2) has been pulled from the web and is currently no longer available for download after Microsoft received complaints that it was causing errors and system instability for some users.

If you attempt to visit the original download links you’ll be met with a message stating "The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable".

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Amazon's app store utilizes its own currency system, in the form of Coins. These can be used by customers to purchase apps, but like other monetary inventions, it does cost real money. However, Amazon is currently holding a sale.

The company is offering its Coins at a discount, saving customers 20 percent off the regular price. That's a nice saving for the apps you want to grab.

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Shane Gowland’s SingularLabs has announced the release of Remembr 0.0.0.1, a simple free clipboard manager for Windows.

As with similar programs, Remembr lives in your system tray, and maintains a list of the text and images you copy to the clipboard.

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