COFFEE NEWS

Now that’s a computer-mod I can get excited about! (not that I’d actually take the time to do it. Hey, I’m not *that* nerdy! (Just nerdy enough to upload a computer espresso maker. :))

Video Link ->

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0QjZ6DY3xc

This Crazy Computer controlled coffee roaster has been developed by Matthew Williams. The machine is also as strange as its name.

The basic PID of the device is a Fuji PXR4 that can be used with a laptop or a computer via a USB port.

In the roaster a fan is used to control the roast process and the roast chamber is made using bakelite tube and a 3” diameter Glass tube.

For the heat to dissipate without damaging the whole setup Matthew has used a high temperature RTV Silicone.

There is a screen at the bottom of the device that can be used to empty the roaster and get freshly roasted beans for a great cup of coffee on a cool and breezy winter morning.

Source:

http://www.gizmowatch.com/entry/computer-controlled-coffee-roaster/

The researchers at HP Labs are a serious bunch working on ways to create the data centers and transistors of the future–but the company sees no harm in going after the gaming-table market on the side.

During an open house here Tuesday celebrating its 40th anniversary, HP Labs showed off Misto, the hybrid of coffee table and tablet PC that promises to either entertain or rile up family members next Thanksgiving.

HP Labs, the central research arm of Hewlett-Packard, is responsible for several game-changing inventions–such as the thermal inkjet printer–which the company has turned into profitable businesses over its 40-year history, said Dick Lampman, senior vice president of research at HP and director of HP Labs. The key is not just working on an interesting project then “tossing it over the wall,” but working closely with HP’s product groups on its research projects, he said.

“We’ve always had a more pragmatic view of our business. You can describe our mission in two words: technology transfer,” Lampman said.

HP Labs operates on a budget of about 5 percent of the entire company’s research and development spending, which was approximately $3.5 billion last year, Lampman said. With 600 employees, HP Labs must divide its time between practical projects that further HP’s existing businesses and purely scientific endeavors that might not pay dividends for a decade, such as its work on future transistors.

Right now, HP is most involved in creating new ways to automate and virtualize data centers with heavy investments in software, Lampman said. The company is also trying to make it easier for its customers to work with unstructured types of data, like e-mail or video content, that must now be archived and searchable in line with new government regulations, he said.

But it’s more fun to play games than to virtualize processing resources, at least for most people. With that in mind, HP has been working on Misto as a slightly different take on the home entertainment PC. Misto is a coffee table with a large touch-screen display built into the top of the table. The idea is to allow a group to congregate around the table and share pictures, play board games, or peruse a map, said Pere Obrador, project manager in HP’s imaging technology department.

Misto uses a standard desktop PC as its engine, but comes with some specialized HP software for managing the interface, Obrador said. Pricing, availability and style of coffee table are all undetermined, but Misto gives people some idea of how HP wants to develop products that expand on its existing businesses.

HP also showed off two other consumer-oriented projects it has had in the lab stage for several years, including an e-book and a pair of sunglasses with a digital camera between the eyes. Many of the same problems that were holding back those devices in 2003 are still present today, such as the need for lower-power displays to improve the battery life of e-books, and the impracticality of dragging a bulky image-processing unit along with a somewhat outdated style of sunglasses.

Source:

http://www.news.com/HP-Labs-marks-40th-with-high-tech-coffee-table/2100-1008_3-6041758.html?tag=item

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, it’s about time that we started coming up with a nice big sappy list of things to pretend to be thankful for this year, but one blessing we sure don’t take for granted is the fact that gone are the days of toting a 26-inch hard drive based DAP, just to loop the first few seconds of the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme song a few thousand times for our morning commute. Or was that just us? Anyways, those massive HD platters from the 70’s are much better suited to uses such as this snazzy coffee table design, complete with aluminum base and a glass covering to protect those precious bits and bytes.

Source:

http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/15/the-26-inch-hard-drive-based-coffee-table/

 There’s really not a whole lot the workplace can offer (or that corporate will allow) to make us want to roll into the office day after day, but Konica Minolta’s “bizhub of the future” just might change all that. Besides being the typical “prone to jamming” mega printer that has become a staple of workplaces everywhere, it touts an integrated screen, DVD player, built-in speakers, and even an espresso machine to keep our eyelids peeled. Of course, you can also scan, copy, and fax while you’re sipping sucking down that caffeinated goodness, but we don’t envision much work getting done with Mike Judge’s Office Space rolling on the LCD. Currently, the machine is simply a prototype waiting for production, but if the Michael Scott’s of the world all band together, surely we can make the mundane work week seem a bit less humdrum.

Source:

http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/5473/6497/konica-minolta-coffee-scanner-printer.phtml

Just face it, Stephen Johnson has a cooler coffee table than you. While you’ve been busy finding large and colorful books full of puppies and/or Oprah Winfrey to stack on top of yours (OK, maybe that’s just us), Stephen Johnson has been building the “ultimate” Media PC inside of his mod-inspired table, and it looks pretty darn sweet. The Coffee Table PC is featured in this month’s issue of T3 magazine, and includes a TV tuner, a 160GB HDD, a special LCD for displaying the weather, and is liquid cooled to keep things nice and quiet. There’s also WiFi for streaming your media wirelessly, but the £2500 starter pricetag ($4765 US) is enough to send us scurrying back to the relative safety of our collection of kitschy books.

Source:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/09/stephen-johnsons-coffee-table-pc/

An audio report documenting the incident and possible resolution to this disaster.

Follow the link for audio-

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/55865