coffee

The last time I went to jury duty, the prosecuting attorney spent a good deal of time talking about one of Albuquerque's most famous lawsuits: the McDonald's hot coffee spill that resulted in a $640,000 award to the elderly woman who was burned.

That's an extreme example of a hot-coffee problem. Most of us just fry our tongues or desperately blow steam out of our mouths. The Smart Lid is looking to save us from our own eagerness.

The disposable Smart Lid changes colors when it's sitting on top of a hot cup of joe. If your cup is topped with bright red, you should chill out for a few minutes before you go in for a sip of that sweet caffeinated nectar of life. … Read more

When it comes to finding flavor in food and drink, the best way to start is at the source. Chefs routinely expound on the virtues of "respecting the ingredients" and for good reason. Finding flavor doesn't have to be a search when it is already there to begin with. Perhaps the same can be said for coffee.

As every coffee-drinker knows, how a cup of joe is prepared can make all the difference. While there may be many different methods of extracting the caffeinated elixir from the bean, the Bodum Bistro Pour Over Coffee Machine focuses on … Read more

Apple is planning to give its Palo Alto, Calif., retail store a reboot as part of an upcoming construction project that will build a new "prototype" store just a block away.

The San Jose Mercury News reports that construction on an upcoming $3.15 million, 15,030-square-foot store is imminent, and that the new location could serve as a replacement for its nearby predecessor.

"Our Palo Alto store was one of our first retail stores when we opened it nearly a decade ago and it's been incredibly popular," Apple spokeswoman Amy Bessette told the Mercury … Read more

Modern living has made life easier in a number of significant ways, with plumbing and electricity topping the list. As a society we've become accustomed to things working with a press of a button or turn of a handle, but that doesn't mean basic necessities cannot be improved upon.

Coffee--a well-known necessity of life--may be plentiful and readily available, but many would consider that to be just a start. Improving upon the accessibility of coffee is the Scanomat TopBrewer.

At first glance the spigot may elicit a question about why a water faucet would be mounted in that … Read more

Freedom in the kitchen can take many forms. Sometimes it is a matter of acquiring the proper ingredients that allow us to express our intentions. Other times, it is a matter of having the right tool for the job; having the right equipment certainly helps--and is necessary in--many food preparations. But sometimes, having freedom in the kitchen simply means being able to walk away.

The Bonjour Turbo Whisk is a battery-operated contrivance that allows for simple prepping to be done in any room of the house. (Or outside of the house, for that matter.) While the ability to perform the … Read more

Not everybody likes calm mornings. For some, the revved-up frenetic pace that is set by the attempt to get out the door on time is the very thing that gets them going. In short, some people only operate at breakneck speed, and for those select few, they now have a coffee mug to match.

Of course, with the vroom-vroom lifestyle of the fast and the caffeinated, no slow, stationary mug will do; it must be a travel mug. The Hot Rod Heated Travel Mug fulfills all of the requirements necessary for a fast (coffee) drinking lifestyle: a candy apple red … Read more

AT&T gets its first LTE smartphones this weekend, Google Reader is integrated with Google Plus, and we learn more about the death of Microsoft's Courier tablet project.

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

You willingly succumb to the seductive siren call of coffee, but all that bean shopping, grinding, and espresso machine twiddling is getting tiresome.

Never fear. Your morning pick-me-up is about to get a lot more portable when the caffeine-packing AeroShot hits the market in a few months.

Each AeroShot is about the size of a tube of lipstick and contains 100 milligrams of caffeine in the form of a fine powder. You can get between six and eight lime-flavored puffs from each cartridge. It's a little bit of molecular gastronomy in your pocket.

David Edwards, a professor at Harvard … Read more

Modern life demands a certain amount of decision-making. Yet, however meaningless a decision may seem at first, they all have their consequences. Take, for instance, the first major decision of the day: the coffee consideration. Certainly there is a fair amount of cruising by on autopilot during the dawn hours, but what if breaking out of the mold of the routine was as easy as pressing another button?

For many, the ability to start out the day with either espresso or drip coffee simply isn't an option. It may not be easy to alter one's routine--especially the morning … Read more