0 Rock The Vote

• video
• by Kingsley H. Smith
• 10/18/2024

It's that time of the year that you may need a little chuckle! Election time in the USA. Watch this short 60 second video, featuring some reels we've created for social media, and my personal on-screen message just for you! 

0 Blackjack 21 AA Mobile App Plays Busting a Move

• video
• by Kingsley H. Smith
• 09/04/2024

In my early Atlantic City, New Jersey radio days, when $2 Blackjack hands were all the thing, I would occasionally part with $25 at the bunny casino to see if I could win. Usually, my instant player emotion was the agony of defeat, rather than the thrill of victory. Players learn that the house always wins, a majority of the time.  What's better than playing with real money? How about using currency that never runs out! It never runs out because it is not real. Blackjack 21 AA app uses simulated money, not real money. I love video poker 'jacks or better,' and I like blackjack. That's why we created two non-money mobile game apps for you to satisfy this enjoyment of playing guilt free with the same exciting real game experience. Here is a 29 second Blackjack 21 AA video I present for you. How was this done? I created the game in Unity, a cross-platform game engine, built by Unity Technologies for application developers. Cross-platform means it can create Android, iOS, and other mobile, console, or desktop format code used for those devices. Xbox by Microsoft is a console device. In the screen shot below, you'll see Unity on a Windows PC. There is also a Unity version for iOS. The simulator section in the shot has an iPad loaded into it to test the screen layout for this particular Apple device. Below Unity is a quick snapshot of some of the Blackjack 21 AA software code in another editor (Visual Studio). The Game Manager module that you see in VS controls the game and gets the card dealing going so you can play.  Phone Based Betting Apps Recently, one of those live online betting apps (that costs you real money) was fined by regulators for accepting bets on some live game elements (that had already ended). Sorry, you money dream purveyors of cash bounty windfalls, you can't operate your business that way for your customers! I haven't tried any of those sports betting apps, nor do I have a desire to do so. I'll stick with the simulated fun, without concern about any real loses.

0 Searching for Relevance On A Website

• video
• by Kingsley H. Smith
• 08/14/2024

Not finding what you are searching for online? A website without a search box is useless, especially if it has lots of cataloged information you are looking for. Crash City The webserver (software) hosting all of our websites operated by a big, corporate, web hosting company was updated twice in 2024, first in March, and again in mid-July. A mandatory, enforced summer upgrade crashed three of our search engines for three different websites, including the one here at Quikthinking.com (but not the blog search). That's separate software. Website domain owners usually have to supply their own search system for their webpages (that are hosted on and by an independent webserver operator). The not so charming corporate webhost people said to me "sorry, but we didn't design the new third party backend system we installed to all of our servers, you and your websites are on your own!" The big fix How did I resolve this explosive headache? The cure was stepping up to a new search system. It took one month of work, evaluating new systems, and finally picking the one that worked best. About two hundred webpages were updated across two different websites including Quikthinking.com. There's one more website to go. That one has over three hundred web pages to update. You'll still see this search engine glitch on that website until we systematically complete the fix. This is part of what you'll see... Nine More Updates to Android 14 done in June and August for: Black History Inventors Black History People Black History Expert Black History Museums Black History People Name Game Thanksgiving Retro Match 3 Game Pizza Burger Match 3 Game  Halloween QuikMoji Game Word Sprinters - Spelling Runners Game Black History People Name Game is completely updated with a new look, new questions, and more features. Here's a quick video:  This is a more advanced Black History game, just waiting for you right now!

0 AAeMojis App Stickers for Text Messaging on an Android 14 Mobile Phone

• video
• by Kingsley H. Smith
• 06/19/2024

With a solid history of upgrades and updates since 2018, over 24 of them to be exact, AAeMojis app stickers for text messaging on an Android 14 mobile phone has nearly completed final testing. In the video, I describe to you on mic how to install the AAeMojis app on an actual Android 14 mobile phone. Android 6 through 13 is still supported by this new version as is the version for iOS. The iOS version update with new stickers was released on the App Store May 30, 2024. Android's update release to Google Play is coming as soon as possible. The  app / stickers are designed to be used with text messaging apps. Enjoy!  

0 Mobile Games and Gifts of Garb

• video
• by Kingsley H. Smith
• 11/21/2023

You might be attracted the most to the 12 signature mobile apps that we've created and feature here at Quikthinking.com. These twelve give you a gateway to discover more about Black History. But there's more. Don't miss out on lots of our games that you can also find here too. I show you games and tell you about garb in the short 43 second video. Take a look at all of the Quikthinking mobile apps. Explore the Always Quikthinking Shop for merchandise and accessories seen in the video. Lots for you and great gift giving too. Thank you for your support!

0 Holiday Greetings - Merry Christmas

• video
• by Kingsley H. Smith
• 12/23/2021

All the best to you in 2022. Our most popular YouTube video of 2021 is below. We hope it was helpful. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel right now.

0 Kodak Zi8 Video Camera Audio Hack

• video
• by Kingsley H. Smith
• 09/17/2020

We've recorded over 100 videos featuring our apps. This summary is not about apps, but about a technique we frequently use to improve the spoken word audio in the videos. Although I have moved on from the Kodak Zi8 camera searching for better video quality (it is acceptable enough, a solid grade of B), the device had one brilliant light bulb benefit, an A+ feature. You can plug a real microphone into the camera to capture sound correctly! Less than $150 video cameras usually never did or don't have this feature. How can you use a Kodak Zi8 camera to capture great sound when using another camera or mobile phone to record the video and audio? You’ll see in the video how we use a simple setup to accomplish this goal. Often if you are providing some spoken dialogue describing scenes you may have your primary camera too far away from human voices to get clean sound. This reduces the quality of the audio especially when lots of background noise is present. A hand-held microphone plugged into the Zi8 might be the answer. Below the Zi8 is plugged into a PC using it's built-in USB plug. I demonstrate our technique in the video showing how the Kodak Zi8 is used for recording the audio portion of a video shoot. If you produce an in-the-field podcast, this technique is a good way to have back-up audio. We still use the Zi8 for some video, but primarily now for audio capture. The better your microphone, the better your sound results will be.  Kodak introduced the Zi8 in 2009. It's two year run ended in 2011 when it was discontinued. You might still be able to find one on Amazon or ebay. Our Zi8, which we bought new, is still in excellent condition. If you have one, don't totally abandon it! Yes, there are other modern digital recorder solutions with microphone inputs. The point of this hack in the video is don't reinvent the wheel if you don't have to. Is your old Zi8 collecting dust? Use it for audio recordings. We still at times use a Sony DAT (digital audio tape) recorder primarily because we mastered a lot of music on it (before transferring tunes to CD, DVD, or thumb drive). Some older technology still works! Our Zi8 is my 3rd favorite video camera in our bag of tricks in front of the 4th place logi HD 1080p webcam and 5th place Motorola Droid 2. What's #1 and #2? A Samsung Galaxy S8 is our hands down favorite right now for video. Second place goes to our iPhone 7. Very good, but not as good as the Galaxy S8. Now, check out the video and watch me work this magic!

0 How Buttons And Memorabilia Can Inspire Mobile Apps

• video
• by Kingsley H. Smith
• 08/24/2020

We've been collecting all kinds of wearable buttons for as long as I can remember. They represent a variety of interests. Ours is a collection of buttons about people, technology, music, charities, radio, and especially politics. In this video from our YouTube Channel: YouTube.com/QuikthinkingSoftware, you'll watch me explain how some of these buttons inspired a "both sides of the aisle" update to our match-3 Android game app Donald Crushed!   I had a long and colorful career in electronic media engineering, radio, and broadcast management. These were great jobs providing memorable experiences...experiences driving many bright light concepts to hopefully implement in a 2nd career. The 2nd career as you may have guessed is professional mobile app development. We've had our hand in general app development for 20 years plus. See some of the music memorabilia and sources that influenced our apps RnB Music Quiz Soul for iOS and RnB Music Quiz Soul for Android. Watch the story and please subscribe to our YouTube channel.    

0 Video Victories Getting Good Vibrations

• video
• by Kingsley H. Smith
• 08/10/2020

YouTube tells us that Quikthinking Software has posted 120 videos since early 2014. That's a lot of material from movie cameras and cell phones. Many moons ago before online movies, we learned how to edit 16 mm (millimeter) film in college. 16 mm is an old-school movie medium made from an acetate plastic which displays an image by using a movie projector. We stuffed this skill into our bag of tricks, not to reference it again until the dawn of digital video production. Scanning through our YouTube videos, we see a diversity of popularity among the top 5 viewed. Two are for games, two are for education, and one is for productivity - entertainment. How did we gauge our top 5 videos of all-time? Each candidate had to have a minimum of 1,000 views. Here they are from bottom to top. #5 (video released in 2015): Fast food seems to stay in style. So does Pizza Burger Match-3 app that was originally released in 2015 (Google Play) as a semi-joke "tongue and cheek" production. Here is #4 (video released in 2017): Black History People was originally a "mobile website" that we sunset and turned into an app in 2011. It is now in it's 3rd generation as a concept and 2nd generation as an app. Here is #3 (video released in 2016): You are encouraged to read the Black History Audiobook Back-Story and watch a different video within the story page.  Here is #2 (video released in 2017): Pizza is as popular as ever. After watching this one, check out the revealing video How Much Pizza Does $1 get you Around the World in our blog. For this 2nd version of our Pizza Burger Match-3 app, we commissioned an artist to hand-paint all of the food images using water colors. Here is our #1 (video released in 2018) Because this is a how-to video we are not surprise that it is #1. "How to Use African American Emojis For Android Text Messaging Update" explains how to enjoy our stickers using any Android phone. The iOS version has always been much easier to use. With coaching from this how-to video, we hope we helped many of you who needed a simplified approach to use these emojis across thousands of different Android devices. Please subscribe to the Quikthinking Software YouTube Channel.

0 Insider Video Tips And How To Tutorials

• video
• by Kingsley H. Smith
• 02/11/2019

Are you one of the nearly 300,000 Quikthinking friends who have gotten some fun, knowledge, or entertainment from using our Android or iPhone apps? If you are, or even if you're not, rediscover through our video channel how our apps can help you charge up your day with joy, amusement, and/or fact based history. Take a deeper dive. Our YouTube channel continues to grow. Subscribe to the Quikthinking Software YouTube channel now. Thanks!