Star Wars technologies that came to life 🌌🔫
Happy Wednesday ;) and May the 4th be with you:
Today is a special day for our Star Wars fans… sorry to disappoint as this issue won’t be Star Wars themed BUT we’ll take a look back at the cool technologies and products we’ve seen from the franchise and how REAL they are today 😍 More about this below!
Here’s what we’ve put together for your weekly Spark reads:
Folk launches on Product Hunt 👯♂️
Building web apps with no code using Softr 🧱
Star Wars technologies that came to life 🌌🔫
Saving our air with tire wear 🚙
The Tribe visits University of Technology of Troyes (UTT) 🏫
💙 NEWS FROM OUR MATESFolk launches on Product Hunt 👯♂️
We met our mates at Folk when we were on the hunt for a straight forward, no-bullshit CRM software - so many are too “heavy” with unnecessary features or just impractical! So when we found Folk to have one of the easiest interfaces to understand, with their software focusing on 1 thing and 1 thing only: to help you best manage your contacts, we decided to give it a shot.
3 months later, we’ve moved ALL of our contacts to Folk and have never looked back. It’s the no-bullshit software we’ve been looking for: import your contacts, group them into multiple segments they belong in (+no duplicate contacts allowed, merge them easily!), enrich data (like automatically add contacts’ companies from their email domains), add custom columns, track all interactions and message contacts or contact groups in 1 click.
They’ve just launched on Product Hunt today! If you sign up within the day, you’ll get priority access this week and 3 unlimited months for FREE! Go support them 🙌
🤸 FUN PRODUCT WE LOVEBuilding web apps with no code using Softr 🧱
If you’re looking for a platform to build your web apps without any code, and as easy as possible, you might just love Softr! You’ll have all the tools you need to build your websites, client portals (to allow clients and members on exclusive pages), team portals (like team knowledge bases and contact info), marketplaces, online communities and resource directories.
Features:
100% design freedom. Configurable styles available for fonts, colors, sizes, images, videos - everything.
100+ pre-built blocks. So you can save time on your actual content, and just drag-and-drop a style you like!
30+ dynamic list layouts. What would you want to showcase? Work? Items for sale?
Membership-exclusive content. For paying clients/members of your web app!
Payment with PayPal or Stripe Integration. Accept payments and customize pricing models!
SEO-optimized. Generate clean, mobile-friendly pages to help you score higher on Google, as well as lets you edit SEO tags and content easily.
Custom form builder. For any contact form you want to add.
Third-party Integrations. Including Zapier, Airtable (yay!), Mailchimp, and more.
Who it’s for: Anyone looking to build web apps without code.
Price: Starts at US$0! Until you need to add custom HTML/CSS/JS, their paid plans start at US$24/month with a 30 day free trial.
💭 TECH FOOD FOR THOUGHTStar Wars technologies that came to life 🌌🔫
Star Wars was first released on May 25th, 1977 (45 years ago now!) and attracted a HUGE fan base - as of 2019, 1 in every 4 internet user identified as a Star Wars fan (1 in every 3 in North America!). Many love it for its great story, ability to connect with different demographics, or even clever marketing, but we especially love it for the various, forward-thinking technologies it showcased that we’ve seen become REAL.
Here are a few of our favorites:
Lightsabers, of course. Right now, we haven’t found a way yet to properly create portable laser blades that have a fixed length, could cut metal like paper and still doesn’t burn your hand. But there are tons of fans still making their own!
Robots & Droids. Nothing as “fluent” as C-3PO and R2-D2 yet, but it should come sooner with GPT-3 and the world’s most advanced human-shaped robots. The US Army has also been using BigDog bots to support soldiers in carrying heavy equipment.
Prosthetics. Similar to Luke Skywalker’s bionic arm, we’ve gone beyond prosthetics and are finding ways to give a sense of touch back to amputees. This one was inspired by Star Wars.
Jetpacks. We’re pretty much there, it’s just not as accessible yet ($$$) or not made to be easily produced.
Speeder Bikes. Or the hover bikes you’d see stormtroopers ride. Multiple companies have been making their own, and Aerofex’s one looks almost too good to be true.
🌱 TECH FOR SUSTAINABILITYSaving our air with tire wear 🚙
If you love F1 or watch a lot of Top Gear, you’ll know that cars need to replace their tires - they wear off. So where do those tire particles go? What most of us don’t know is that tires can be 1000x more harmful than exhaust fumes: 550,000 tonnes of tire particles smaller than 0.01mm are deposited each year, with almost half ending up in the ocean. The other half? In the air that we breathe.
Tires are made of plastics and rubber, and are the 2nd biggest microplastic pollutant after single-use plastics. This is what motivated the team at The Tyre Collective to create a device that will help avoid getting these plastics in our waters, food and bodies. They’ve created one that attaches to a car tire and uses electrostatic and the aerodynamics of a spinning wheel to collect tire dust as it's produced - helping remove up to 60% of tire particles on roads. Check them out, they’ve been part of Forbes 30 Under 30, The James Dyson Award, and many others!
💥 WHAT’S ON @ SPARKMATEThe Tribe visits University of Technology of Troyes (UTT) 🏫
Did you know: Morgan, Max and Ghis (our co-founders) all went and met at UTT? As well as a few of us in the team! There, we learned much of what we know about technology and engineering, but it’s also where we sparked the first idea of working together to build solutions for tomorrow’s challenges… and build Sparkmate!
UTT invited the tribe to come by for “Builders Hours”, where we met other students and student entrepreneurs to talk and go through their ideas or plans of #bootstrapping #proofofconcept #MVPs #protototyping #productmarketfit #gotomarket. It was 2 hours of sharing what we knew and giving the Spark ⚡️
You don’t need to be a student at UTT to ask anything or bounce ideas with us. If there’s a way you think we can help, even if it was just a conversation, just shoot us an email! 💌
Exciting things are happening every day ⚡️ Follow us on social media to stay tuned!