Weasel puked coffee from Vietnam: picked and regurgitated by a weasel. Why puked coffee, you ask? The weasel (a type of civet) likes to eat the fruit of the coffee plant, but the seeds don’t agree with their stomachs, so the weasel vomits them up. The resulting coffee beans produce coffee that is purported to have a “surprising delicious chocolatey taste.” So if you’re looking for a gift for an avid coffee drinker, you may be interested in this.

The recipient may find it funny as a collectible, or may may even like the taste (or just barf it up… again). Whichever outcome appeals to you, you can purchase a 2oz package of this puke for $24.99.

Humanity has finally arrived. After so many false starts—Ancient Egypt, Classical Athens, Caesarian Rome, Catholic Spain, Napoleonic France, Victorian England, to say nothing of the Asian empires—we now look to Finland, the epitome of civilization.

Yes, there’s now a Windows-powered coffee maker. Windows XP, even. It even has an 8-inch touchscreen, for touching. That you can program it over the Internet—brew a pot at 6:00pm so that it’s ready by the time I get home from work—only adds to its grandeur.

via DVICE

Starbucks is giving out a free tall cup of its delightful brew today for anyone that asks for it. Originally, the coffee shop simply asked that you come in and tell the lady or gent behind the counter that you voted and then you will get a free cup but that is illegal in some states as it can be construed as a gift for voting. So now all you need to do is stroll in to your local Starbucks today and proclaim your desire for a free tall cup of coffee in order to receive one on them; still, go vote.

IFA 2008 offers the curious spectator an awful lot to look at.  There are hundreds of televisions, computers, projectors, stereos, navigation systems, MP3 players, and all other manner of gadget covered by CrunchGear, from all the brand names you know and love.  But this year’s IFA introduced a new set of products to the show: so-called “white goods”.  Things like refrigerators, washing machines, kitchen appliances, and more.  Read on for a photo safari through the “home appliances” section of IFA.

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Coffee snobs will likely tell you that Philips’ Senseo coffee makers can’t make a decent cup of coffee compared to $10,000+ professional-grade coffee brewers. That’s probably true and I’m not a coffee snob. I had the original Senseo machine way back when it came out and the coffee it was able to make was good enough to keep me from spending $3 a day for a cup of black gold from my nearby coffee chain.

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The joy of walking into a Starbucks and buying a CD or copping an iTunes gift card along with a venti iced coffee is over! The coffee chain, which has hit a bit of a rough patch, will no longer sell CDs or offer iTunes gift cards at its retail locations. It will still offer free Wi-Fi, though, so don’t freak out too much.

Not enough people were buying CDs at stores to make it worth the company’s time of day. Never mind that the local, non-Starbucks café—if you have one—has free Wi-Fi, cheaper (better?) coffee, and lacks the pretentiousness of the Seattle-based chain.

In other music-related news, it looks like Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” sold quite well, despite the fact that it was available on BitTorrent sites for some time before its official release. But piracy kills the industry and makes baby angels cry, I know.

Starbucks will give away Wi-Fi starting tomorrow, June 3. Or:

When you register your Starbucks Card and use it at least once a month, you’ll receive two consecutive hours a day of complimentary Wi-Fi, courtesy of AT&T.

Not much to complain about here, really. Buy an elitist latte once in a while, and check the headlines. Like, say, that Mourinho is officially at Inter Milan. And it’s regular Wi-Fi, too, and none of this iPhone-only nonsense. (Can’t you just change the user agent?)

Starbucks motives are pretty obvious. With the price of living having gone up, as Ben Bernake said, “like whoa,” people may be less inclined to spend $4 on a sugar+caffeine drink. So, lure them with free Wi-Fi.

That said, may I suggest you bring a pair of headphones? The music playing at Starbucks is so depressing most of the time I’m in there, so supplying my own soundtrack is a necessity.

Might want to find something other than Red Bull or Cocaine for those up-all-night coding sessions, fellers. It seems they may not be too healthy for you, and they may encourage “risky” behavior. Oh my!

The Journal of American College Health recently published a study that shows a strong link between the consumption of energy drinks—Red Bull, Amp, Monster, Cocaine, etc.—and “toxic jock” behavior. In non-stupid English, “toxic jock” translates to aggressive and risky behavior. Surely staying up till 2am scanning and things into Delicious Library counts as risky behavior, right? It gets crazy for real here.

While the drinks contain all sorts of weird ingredients like guarana, it’s mainly caffeine that’s to blame for the unruly behavior. So why isn’t coffee demonized in the study, especially since a Starbucks drink usually has more coffee than the aforementioned energy drinks? Simple—energy drinks are cold. While with a cup of coffee you have to sip it, thus limiting your actual consumption, energy drinks are treated as refreshments, so you’re more likely to drink a hell of a lot in a short period of time.

All this could lead to an interesting, if not completely unscientific feature: which energy drink gives you the most bang for your buck?

Image was Flickr’d

No, coffee isn’t a gadget per se, but judging by Twitter and what I know about some of the many bloggers out there, a hell of a lot of you need the drink to make it through the day. Don’t see me before I’ve had my first cup ‘o joe, lol! Quite.

Be that as it may, would you be willing to pay 50 quid, or about $100, for a cup of coffee? Even if said cup of coffee was made from cat droppings? You would? Excellent!

A London store is selling coffee, espressos and lattes (oh my!) with the special ingredient, which comes from an Indonesian bean. No, I don’t know how that works, either. Since only 450lbs of the bean are harvested every year, you’ll have to pay though the nose to partake.

And to think I pay $2 every day for that Mud coffee that’s sold ’round here. Anyone in the audience willing to pay $100 for coffee, other than as a gift?

via Drudge Report

Programmers, college kids and anyone else who needs one or two (or more!) cups of joe (n. Morning Joe) to get through the day might enjoy this unusual coffee maker, Kahva. (”Kawa,” pronounced the same as “kahva,” is “coffee” in Polish. Other cognates exist, too. We’re educational.) While the premise is not all too dissimilar to a percolator, the fact that the water flows upward bemused more than one passerby.

Not me, though. Not bemused.

UPDATE~! Oh man, egg on my face. Seems Kahva can more accurately (read: “correctly”) be described as a vacuum coffee maker. What do I know? I go to Starbucks and spend $2 on a grande bold every day.

When one of my older relatives gave me a percolator as a gift last summer, I literally had to Google what the hell the thing was. You put the water where? Does the coffee go in out or, do you have to shake it all about? If so, for how long? I eventually got the hang of it, but then instantly switched over to a regular, drip machine a few weeks later. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t be bothered with the “oldness” of the device. Why use a rotary phone if I don’t have to?

To me, the taste wasn’t so much “better” that I had to re-arrange my schedule just to get the percolator out of the blast furnace. El Sr. Ruhlman, who writes about food for real, disagrees. Percolators, apparently, fill the soul with only the freshest nine cups of coffee.

Maybe I’m the wrong person to have written this, not being much of a coffee person. I’d be fine with doing a double stacked hit of ecstasy in the morning to wake up if it weren’t for the wicked teeth grinding that happens a few hours in.

Percolator Love [ruhlman.com via Boing Boing Gadgets]

I never thought I’d see the day that I stopped throwing down $2 (minimum) for a strong cup of coffee at the local coffee shop. Now, I throw down $8 for an entire bag of beans and have my coffee waiting for me in the morning-time.

Here’s what’s great about this machine. You put the beans in the built-in grinder, it grinds them into a fine powder, and makes the coffee. That’s it. It’s simple. It takes under a minute to get everything ready to go and then the coffee’s ready shortly thereafter. It’s delicious, too. So delicious that I’ve stopped using creamer altogether.

The carafe keeps the coffee warm for hours and there’s a permanent filter so you don’t have to keep buying the paper ones. At $150, it’s a bit on the expensive side but it’s totally worth it if you drink coffee every day. There’s a timer function, too, so you can (say it with me) set it, and forget it. You’ll wake up in the morning to some delicious, delicious coffee.

DGB-600BC [Cuisinart]

I’m sitting here staring at my Belkin USB hub that serves as a poor man’s docking station because I’m too cheap to spring for a $180 piece of plastic from Sony that would allow me to whisk my laptop from room to room and I can’t help but feel agitated by the fact that I don’t know what the hell time it is and my coffee isn’t getting any warmer.

If only there were a device that did all three things without taking up precious desk space! And if only this device cost less than $25 and only had support for USB 1.1 devices, not USB 2.0! I’d pay up to, and including, $24 plus shipping for such a device!

USB Cup Warmer with USB Hub and Clock [Brando]

Computerworld’s Mile Elgan predicts that within a year, Starbucks will offer free wireless internet access. I advise that if Starbucks does end up doing this, that it not make it seem like it’s the greatest company in the world for doing so. Just quietly roll it out, put up a little sign, and let’s move on.

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