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Quikthinking Software Blog
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    0 Card Game Action for Non Gamblers

    • Games
    • by Kingsley H. Smith
    • 03/08/2023

    I always liked video poker and video blackjack. They both offer card-play entertainment  for some quick fun. I never took the gambling part seriously, so in my case, its always been possible to walk away with funds in hand when the games would end at a casino. My love of these games inspired me to create my own versions as an alternative to real casinos or online gambling with money. I haven't done online gambling. The Android or iOS game experience presented here is good. That's why I've shared them with you. Both are mobile apps that don't involve real wagering. That is, you don't bet any real money so they are suitable for most ages. The rules for Video Poker Jacks or Better could not be easier but they take some studying to master. Out of the fifty-two card deck you draw five cards from which you try to make the best combinations. Two Jacks, two Queens, two Kings, or two Aces return one to five credits depending on how many coins you've wagered. Nine combinations of cards with the point allocations are at the top of the game screen: Royal Flush: Ten, Jack, Queen, King, Ace of the same suit. Full House: three of a kind together with two of a kind  Flush: five cards of the same suit Straight: five consecutive cards, for example: six, seven, eight, nine, and ten of any suit in any order on the screen. Would you rather work with two cards instead of five? Step over to Blackjack 21 AA. Get as close as you can to twenty-one without going past 21. Caution. You are playing against an AI dealer so beware. Take a look and listen... Good luck! Blackjack 21 AA and Video Poker Jacks or Better. Android or iOS.

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    0 Word Sprinters Fight For Literacy

    • Games
    • by Kingsley H. Smith
    • 03/03/2023

    As I've previously written, I joined Literacy Volunteers of America to help adults learn to read when I was an undergraduate at Rutgers University. See Spelling Runners Literacy: Driving A Game App. Sadly, not much in the USA literacy universe has changed since my university days. In Boston, Dr. Jim O'Connell stated in a March 2, 2023 NBC News video profile that 25% of the homeless men he treats on the streets of Beantown can't read or write. My home base of operation is the Greater Philadelphia, PA region. Achieve Now, a City of Brotherly Love organization is committed to "helping Philadelphia families battle systemic inequities. They see literacy as a social justice issue." According to Achieve Now, "22 percent of Philadelphians aged 16 and older lack the most basic literacy skills. 52% of Philadelphia's adults are functionally illiterate, and 67% are low-literate, reading at a sixth- to eighth-grade level. Almost 40% of adult Philadelphians struggle to fill out a job application, to read doctors’ instructions on their medicines, and to help with their children’s homework." Statistics don't lie. Achieve Now also states that "Philadelphia ranks 92nd out of the 100 largest U.S. cities in educational attainment. 17.4% of adult Philadelphians—an estimated 225,000—do not have a high school diploma, compared to 10.5 percent in Pennsylvania at large." When I was in the third grade, I was lucky because comic books and books were always in the home. Even though I was a rambunctious kid, my third grade reading level was that of a fifth or sixth grader. This is why when you take a look at several of our apps, word game or people name games are positioned center stage. I'm not naive enough to think that a software application can cure illiteracy, but working or playing with words can benefit those who want to move forward. In putting together the Word Sprinters game, another developer on my team helped me pack almost 500 words into the mix. I wanted the words to appear faster than my own app code would allow. The co-developer did some of the heavy coding changes, and I researched which words would make the final cut. I personally selected three, four, five, six, seven, and eight letter words popping them into the game mix. You'll see in this short 16 second video how the gameplay gets you physically involved. Someone you know might gain more confidence by using this app (with a dictionary too) but I doubt that will be needed. Word Sprinters was formerly called Spelling Runners   

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    0 Black Audiobook Gives You 30 History Stories

    As Black History Month 2023 rolls to an end, you may want to get a hold of our 100% free Black audiobook. You'll hear 37 minutes of detailed informative stories reflecting American history. A global influencer is represented in the book too. Black History Audiobook tackles the tough subjects: Affirmative Action, African American Demographics, America's Black Patriots, and African American Authors. Besides the movements, the stories include Thurgood Marshall, Nelson Mandela (he's a bonus), Bessie Colman, Madam C.J. Walker, and 26 more. Listen to samples of nine influential contributors to American history and the world read by me (Hugh Smith) and announcer Shenteria Childs in this short 3 minute video. We read all 30 stories in the app. See the link below the video (you will stay on our website).   Put Black History Audiobook on your iPhone or Android mobile phone. The app is scheduled to included even more great stories in the coming months!

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    0 Play With Your Inventions Anytime

    Sometimes a name can be misleading. The Black History Inventors Quiz is a trivia game. What else is it? It's three total games to enjoy, plus a drawing design tool to sketch your own invention! Next we add a long list of inventors with descriptions of their work, and you have a complete resource to discover. Here's what one user had to say (who wanted to remain anonymous) about this Android app. The review is posted on the Black History Inventors Quiz Google Play page: "Originally download the quiz for fun and ended up liking this a lot. The quiz actually ended up including mini games nd they are a great way to pass time in between classes but what I enjoyed most was the built in encyclopedia of feats and inventions by black inventors and it also had a little info about the inventors themselves. I was kind of surprised how many answers I didn't know starting off but my memory was certainly jogged! I can see how this app can serve a huge purpose in the lives on students especially the younger ones since they would enjoy the mini games much more than I would. That being said this app is a great resource for all ages!" Watch this then grab the app:  More about The Black History Inventors Quiz

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    0 2 More Apps To Score For Black History Month

    Here are two more mobile apps for you that are winners 12 months a year, but don't let Black History Month pass you by without trying them out! RnB and Hip Hop Quiz Trivia is the game to play to celebrate 50 years of great music. Both Android and iOS feature multiple choice Questions. For iPhone - iPad we add true and false questions. Discover more about the RnB and Hip Hop Quiz triva game. Add AAeMojis to your text messages whenever you want! You'll have 160 Black emojis to use that include special messages for birthdays, holidays, and Black History Month. See more and watch both videos on the AAeMojis information page. "Simply awesome" Tandi Wilder   "These emojis are awesome for texting. I like the assortment of characters. Great job!" Anita Jones   "I love this app" chAregler   "Excellent emojis. I love them on my Android. Really easy to use." Dee Park   "I purchased and installed them today. Now I don't have to go to my iphone in order to dress up my messages. This app is supposed to be ad-free. That is why I didn't install the "free" apps." LaJuana Glaze

  • 0 5 Black History Month Apps That You Need To Discover

    Among the 12 Black History mobile apps created by Quikthinking Software, here are the 5 Black History apps I highly recommend. Discover them for Black History Month. It matters if events happened before you were born. This is history connected to now. Even though Black History Month began in 1976, Dr. Carter G. Woodson created Negro History Week in 1926. His week honoring Black culture was the second week of February between the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Today Black history is saluted internationally. October is Black History Month in the United Kingdom.  Photo: Hugh Smith. Calendar concept below created by Hugh Smith.   5 Black History Month Apps That You Need To Discover: Black History Quotes Express Black History Quiz Black History People Game Black History Inventors Black History Express All are extremely popular for both Android and iOS. #5 Black History Express is currently Android only. Connections to all of these apps are at the bottom of this post.   Black History Quotes Express Black History Quotes Express features nearly three thousand soul purging thoughts radiating from a who's who list of shining visionaries. These people share themes about: Love Motivation Inspiration Instruction Friendship Humor Family Reflection Leadership Empowerment Faith The quotes can be easily searched, bookmarked, copied and shared. Watch as I tell you more in this 59 second video.     Black History Quiz Black History Quiz gives you fact based trivia that may open your eyes about some overlooked topics. Teachable moments pop out from these questions. For iPhone you'll soar through multiple choice, true or false, and picture quiz challenges. Watch these two videos for Black History Quiz for iPhone and Android platforms.   Black History People Game What's celebrating Black History without having some fun in the process. Your fingers will get some keyboard exercise when you play Black History People Game. Inside of the app is the complete list of the people we use and their claim to fame so you'll be able to learn more about them. Here's a 30 second snapshot video of Black History People Game.   Black History Inventors 50 inventors are profiled in a mini audiobook using images, biography and sound to feature successful men and women creators. See the Black History Inventors app videos and read what 10 users have said about the app. They share why they love it!   Black History Express Black History Express is an African American knowledge base and fun quiz game. Within 28 big chapters you'll find 'art to theater' and everything in between. Use the app summaries as a reference when you need to find information fast. You can bookmark your favorite sections to find them quickly for later use. Search easily through all of the chapters to find the people who are included in this special showcase. Black History Express also includes a quiz trivia game based on the information you'll find in the 28 big chapters of the app. With hundreds of questions, you'll reinforce your appetite to know a little bit more and to beat the quiz trivia game! *** Bonus *** Black History People NAME Game Not to be confused with Black History People Game featured earlier, the name game is an advanced "remove the appropriate word" brain puzzler teaser. If you really know about Black History, Black History People Name Game is for you. Compete with other global players in this Android only app.  Most of the 4 word teasers are general knowledge combinations based on a Black History person. You don't have to be an expert to play along. I demonstrate in this short 30 second game video. Find all of the apps (from these pages on our website) to the app stores: Black History Quotes Express Black History Quiz Black History People Game Black History Inventors Black History Express  The Bonus, plus a special extra!         Black History People NAME Game         Black History Picture Puzzle Game Enjoy them all. Thanks! This is not some February influencer fad for us. We've been creating Black History apps/software since 1998.

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    0 Will AI Create Your Next App?

    ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence tool, has exploded across screens everywhere since it's November, 30, 2022 public introduction. If used as a cheating tool, ChatGPT can do a decent job completing school assignments for students. Will this technology replace app developers? Forbes and Fox Business have both reported that a conga line of educators have immediately banned the app from all school devices: The Los Angeles Unified School District (December, 2022) Seattle Public Schools (January, 2023) New York City Public Schools (January, 2023) **** Several universities have pushed the delete button on the technology too. That's a fast reaction to a viral trend, but what will stop students from using the app on their own personal devices? ChatGPT is able to solve math problems, churn out college essays and write research papers. How does it work? You think of a goal. You then compose a text sentence about the goal inside of the app's writing box. Finally ChatGPT goes out to the internet to do its noble or rogue deed scraping public information from everywhere. The gathered material is compiled into prose worthy of a best selling author. Here's an example. "Write an essay on the history of creating visual novel mobile games." If you've used ChatGPT, try it and see what you get!   For software app developers, AI art generators are also gaining fast traction as a speedy way to create respectable images. Art generators use algorithms and machine learning to create graphic pictures at lightening speed. Text to video? That's waiting in the wings...of course! It's in development making ChatGPT look like the junior varsity. Meta, owner of Facebook continues to work on Make-A-Video, an application that generates a video from a sentence you enter into a text box. Demos of the app have been released to the public. I've seen them. The app is not public. Google's text to video AI Imagen looks even better than Facebook's. You enter a sentence into a text box to produce a video that can even include AI generated text. Imagen is not publicly available but from what I've seen of the videos they look amazing. For an app developer needing software code, AI experts in the field say that subroutines can and will be written by AI as small modules to be included in larger projects. Since tech leaps ahead so quickly, the day will come when AI can write full applications for even smaller developers. I'd say that it makes no sense to stand in the way of developing technology. Humans with emotional skill will have abilities that AI can't deliver - for now. If you've used a digital spell checker or thesaurus are you cheating? No, not really. Modern tools always continue to evolve. Smart inventors will create new ways to potentially improve life. In the world of digital creators, sweat equity for manual creation will give way to AI automation. Then, we'll all have more time to think about better solutions to our problems while the machines do the grunt work. How long will it take for both humans and AI to be equally proficient? Only time will tell. It doesn't take a fortune teller to predict that text to video will be replaced by speech to video. Who knows what will be after that? The thoughts you've just read were written 100% by me, Hugh Smith! Sorry ChatGPT. **** May 18, 2023 update. New York City's Department of Education has made a one hundred eighty degree turn! ChatGPT will now be allowed on school devices and networks. Which other educator will be next to hold digital hands with this cutting edge technology?  

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    0 Black History Quiz For Android Or Iphone With Answers

    • Quiz
    • by Kingsley H. Smith
    • 01/20/2023

    I wonder why the state of Florida rejected a 2023 proposal for an Advanced Placement African American Studies course, saying it 'lacked educational value.' What? When I was a New York City high school senior (final spring semester) I already had enough credits to graduate. In this all elective closing semester I took an Asian - African history course because I was interested in learning more about both cultures. This course turned me on to "Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America 1619 - 1964" written by Johnson Publishing Company editor Lerone Bennett Jr. The book was part of the required reading for the course. Post high school, on my journey through life I'm better off as a USA citizen thanks to Bennett's presentation of detailed historic facts. He begins his reveal in 1492. Back to today. Why are some people afraid of learning about the truth? Haters didn't stop me 25 years ago from creating my first Black history digital resource in 1998. See the Quikthinking Software timeline. Time marches on in our 25th anniversary year of creating Black history content. Black History Quiz for Android was released in 2013. The iPhone version followed in 2018. I researched and wrote all of the questions myself. In this 4 minute video with narration below I quickly play the game on an Android and iPad in real time. Hopefully you won't think that this 100% American trivia quiz lacks educational value. You may find it entertaining too!

  • 0 MLK JR Quotes in Black History Quotes Express

    • Quotes
    • by Kingsley H. Smith
    • 01/11/2023

    It started with the March on Washington in 1963 up until his assassination in 1968. The FBI engaged in an intense campaign to discredit Martin Luther King Jr. and his work. Film director Sam Pollard chronicles those efforts in his 2021 documentary, MLK/FBI. You may not know that unfortunate story. There is a deeper influence of Dr. King's advocacy to appreciate more than just his words from the "I have a dream" speech. King was in and out of jail fighting for his people's liberation. We want to focus on the bright side of the King legacy. Here are 25 memorable quotes by world changer Martin Luther King Jr. that you'll find in our mobile app Black History Quotes Express for iPhone and Android. Touch the enlarge icon (next to the sound speaker image) in the video on your phone to watch full screen, landscape.

  • 0 Texting With Powerful Images Video

    When I use one of these AAeMojis in my text messages, I'm always asked about them. What are they? Watch my quick 23 second video. We continue to offer them to you for your iPhone or Android enjoyment!

  • 0 What Did You Do For The First Time In 2022?

    In 2022 I made five people extremely happy by offering them amazing digital online deals, but there's more to the story. My loss was their gain. Let's begin with these 5 items kicked out of the Quikthinking Software office space... One generic 4K camcorder One Sony digital audio tape recorder (DAT) One high quality Marantz cassette recorder One Optimus handheld Digital voice recorder One "how-to market online guide" by author Derek Gehl  Here are the actual item pictures: I haven't used these tech items for years. All were in working condition but they sat around the office in their original boxes collecting dust. We now use other modern electronic devices that have replaced the "antiques." What did I do for the first time in 2022? Two things to note, but there are others. These tech items tie into the first. Have you guessed? I sold them all on eBay! Sales were in December 2021, January 2022, March 2022, and November 2022! I'm counting the late December 2021 "experiment" for 2022. To my pleasant surprise, all of these items sold quickly at fair market value generating a reasonable price based on their age. The photos you see for the listings on eBay were taken with a Samsung Galaxy S8 mobile phone. I've added the tan background for this post. Early in eBay's history shady sellers and suspicious buyers gave the platform a questionable reputation. Time marches on. eBay improved their platform controls. We finally decided to take the plunge. Am I late to the party? Yes, but so what! It certainly beats a yard sale! You can easily find some very good "how to do eBay" guides online if like me, you've never tried it before. Look for a guide to watch or a guide to read. I found the entire eBay process easy to manage. The second thing we did for the first time in 2022 was clean the inside of our microwave oven! What a difference a cleansing makes. I won't reveal how long we've had this particular microwave, but the point is you can always move forward if you challenge yourself to do so. If you didn't get to accomplish a doable goal in 2022, move it into 2023. Forget about resolutions. Make the goal simple. Make it something that you know you will be able to do. Focus on something you will do for the first time ever! For the year that is ending, what did you do for the first time?

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    0 Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa Greetings, Happy New Year!

    • Personal
    • by Kingsley H. Smith
    • 12/24/2022

    Light it up. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa Greetings, Happy New Year from me (on the left) to you! The shy ones did not get into the picture.

  • 0 Your 5 Most Watched Quikthinking Videos from 2022

    You've watched our YouTube videos about Quikthinking mobile apps, teaching tools, quizzes, and casual games with a multicultural touch. Thank you! Some of these you've seen here as well as on YouTube. Here are the 5 most watched Quikthinking YouTube videos from 2022 ranked from #5 to #1 based on your views (as of this writing). We did not include any YouTube Shorts. Give us a thumbs up for the one(s) you like the best! #5 #4 #3 #2 #1

  • 0 Zodiac Signs Jigsaw Puzzle Walkthrough Video

    • Games
    • by Kingsley H. Smith
    • 12/20/2022

    Zodiac sign games should use art work that has a lot of variety. You'll see the styles we used to create Zodiac Signs Jigsaw Puzzle for mobile in this short 3 minute video.  

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    0 Hop Into Your Yuletide Stride Before The New Year Hits!

    • Expos
    • by Kingsley H. Smith
    • 12/16/2022

    This photo didn't make it into the August, 2022 Black Label Comicon 3 in Philly feature that we wrote about. Check it out if you missed it. Chris Fraley aka Blackman on the left, Hugh Smith aka himself on the right. Joseph Bruno is the photographer. Happy holidays to you! Tis' the season to be jolly, so here's a Santa Jump Game challenge for you. Can you unlock level 4 in this mobile game before the new year hits? If you can, let us know. What's your score? Good luck! Hop to it !

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