š¦Ice Cream Drama, Trifolding Phones, and the Magical Blackberry Inbox
one inbox to rule them all
Hey friends! Hope youāre doing great this week.
Our infant son is doing fantastic! Heās happy, healthy, and very sleepy . . . just like us haha. Weāve been drinking a lot of coffee.
Iāve been enjoying The Head on HBO Max. Itās a murder mystery set in the arctic. Itās quite good! Iām currently on the second to last episode . . . and I have to be honest. I have no idea whoās doing the murders.
Iāve been listening to a lot of UK Drill rap while I work to keep concentration and flow. Hereās a great playlist that Iāve been grinding my work to.
Surely, we canāt leave out that āThe Josh Fightā actually happened last week?
If you arenāt aware of the real life meme, a dude named Josh FB messaged everyone else with the same name and challenged them to a fight for the name at a set of coordinates.
And it actually happened!
Crazy, I know.
Well, letās hop on into todayās topics!
š¦McDonaldās Ice Cream Drama
The plot thickens! or should I say . . . the ice cream thickens haha.
So you know how the ice cream machines never work at McDonalds? Well, apparently a third party company developed a device āwhich could easily "hack" into the soft serve machine and fix it.ā
Itās called Kytch, and it sounds really cool. Essentially, it turns your dumb ice cream machine into a smart device.
You can even monitor your machine remotely via an app! A fantastic way to stay on top of potential issues that busy employees may not notice in time.
Well, to some McDonalds franchisees, this was a dream come true
Some McDonald's franchiseesĀ saw Kytch as a much-needed solutionĀ to their soft serve problems and started using the device quickly. After all, they had been waiting for a system-wide solution for years, but McDonald's never delivered on their promises. What they were left with were expensive machines whose inner-workings were inaccessible to them, unless they hired Taylor-approved distributors to perform pricey maintenance and fixes. On the other hand, Kytch basically offered user-friendly tools for diagnosing and, in some instances, preventing soft serve machine malfunctions. (Source)
Everything sounds great, right? Well, McDonaldās was not a fan - and quickly rolled out a very convenient solution after years of ice cream issues.
McDonald'sāseemingly out of nowhereāissued a franchise-wide notice discouraging store owners from installing Kytch, and advising them that the use of the device would invalidate their warranties with Taylor. The following day, a follow-up email from McDonald's announced the release of Taylor's own "Taylor Shake Sundae Connectivity"āa user-interface device similar in concept to Kytch. (Source)
Sounds so convenient, doesnāt it??
Kytch believes that thereās more than meets the eye.
Kytch's contracts forbid McDonald's franchisees from sharing the technology with third parties. If, as Nelson and O'Sullivan believe, Taylor did manage to access a Kytch device (which the company has not denied), it would have been with the help of a McDonald's franchisee. As they revealed toĀ Wired, the Kytch makers suspect several of their McDonald's clients have violated their contractsāincluding, notably, Gambleāand they plan to file lawsuits against them. (Source)
Itās a fascinating tale. What do you think? Did McDonaldās screw over Kytch and copy their software?
Read more at the link!
š± Trifolding Phones
Iāve written recently about rollable phones - twice in fact.
Well, itās time to talk about trifolding phones - like the one on WestWorld.
Iām excited to say . . .thereās evidence that some may actually be arriving in the next year or so!
Enter the Galaxy Z Fold Tab - the ultimate in folding phones so far.
Hereās the Letās Go Digital render from Tomās Hardware. This is based off a Samsung Patent.
Personally, i think thereās a darn good chance that this will come out in the next two years, especially when you take into consideration that TCL already has a prototype of a trifolding device.
This is a real picture from CNET.
Yeah. That looks pretty darn cool to me. Heck, watch this hands on video.
It will be a few years before these are normal device, unfortunately. Itās gonna take at least one to three early adopter generations to work the kinks out of these. Not to mention - this brick is gonna have to get substantially thinner before I carry something like this around.
I really do enjoy living in these ānewā smartphone times. The last six years have been a great battle of bigger screens, faster processors, and bettter cameras.
Weāve returned to the madness of experimental devices - and possibly the final frontier in Smartphone development.
Can we get better than a folding pocketable device we can use as a phone, tablet, and portable laptop?
Thatās the big ticket question.
While we ponder, letās wander back to some original iPhone commericals from 2007
or the Sidekick
š¶The Magical Blackberry Inbox
Once upon a time, the Blackberry phone ruled the world.
Then, Iphone wiped them from the map . . .
and now the only modern Blackberry phones you can buy are a few years old.
There was one killer feature that has never been replicated since.
Back in like 2004 or 2005 you had a BlackBerry. There was an āappā on there (they werenāt called apps back then) where you would see all your incoming messages. Any type of messages, doesnāt matter what āappā, what service, it was all there . . . Now today. You have an iPhone or an Android. Want to check your Facebook messages? Open the Facebook Messenger app. Want to check Signal? Open the Signal app. Email? Open your email app (and you might have more than one of those, even).
Since 2005, the amount of avenues for messages and notifications have doubled, or tripled!
Think about it. The average person probably gets messages on at least 5 of the following.
SMS, iMessage, Google Chat, Facebook, Instagram, Slack, Snapchat, Twitter, Signal, Telegram, Whatsapp, Discord, Pinterest, Skype . . .
They all ping in their respective apps - trying to get you to commit yourself to spend more time there. Remember when Facebook Messenger thought it was Wechat? **shudder**
Here we are in the year 2021, and thereās only one major challenger rising to the occasion - for $10 a month.
Itās called Beeper - and itās one inbox for all messaging - kind of like the Blackberry experience.
Check it out at the link!
But what about all your other apps? like Gmail, Clickup, Spotify . .
Well for that, thereās TryShift which is insanely cool
šThe Land of Random
Random randomness for you to ramdomly muse about
Host Audio Chats on Your Site
This is pretty darn cool. Host Clubhouse style audio chats on your website with visitors. Weāve come a long way since the humble chatbot . . .
Build Your Own Live Ticker Tape
Want your Stonks or Cryptos in a live pixel feed? Do it yourself with this Arduino Tutorial.
Troll Your Friends with Windows XP
This fun website is a replica of Windows XP with a lot of crazy little pranks. Just open the site, close the welcome windows, and make it full screen. Your friend wonāt know what hit āem.
Write Interactive Fiction
Using this markdown editor, you can write your own interactive fiction! Thereās quite a bit of coding involved, but not toooo much. One of these weeks Iām going to write one.
Mortal Shell
How have I not heard of this intense looking Dark Souls style game.
Toyotaās Autonomous City
Toyota is building a autonomous city near Mt. Fuji in Japan. It sounds absolutely wild!
3D Coding Environment
This website is trippy, and if you know how to code - even more fun! Click on the dots to make them do crazy things.
š¶TikToks You Canāt Miss
This would be a surreal stairway experience
Sign me up. Where do I buy one?
Thatās actually a pretty cool Hot Wheels fact.
NGL - Iām so happy to see his new videos and see heās still alive
Mickey will get his way . . . . at any cost
Yesss thatās how you promote your brand
See Rock. Dig Rock.
Well, thatās all for this week! See yāall next time.
Thanks for recommending The Head and the ink's writing guide for interactive stories. šš