A 'Smart' Coffee Maker

The next coffee innovation? Well it comes from Microsoft of all places!

Hitting the shelves in time for the holidays is a new coffee maker by Salton Inc. The new Melitta Smart Mill & Brew, has features that have long been promised. Sure, any coffee maker can make great coffee, especially if its making Shock Coffee, but this one does something that others cannot. This new brewer actually delivers you the weather with your coffee!

For this time of year, that's not a bad idea. You get up in the morning, shuffle downstairs to make that first pot to get your day going. As you are getting your first cup your very friendly coffee maker informs you that its 10 degrees outside, essentially giving you the idea that long-john underwear is going to be a must before you set foot out the door.

This machine boasts in full:

• Ten-cup programmable coffee maker grinds and brews automatically for ease of use
• LCD display with animated coffee and region-specific weather information via MSN Direct
• Info via FM signal; no setup, subscription or Internet connection required
• Seven grind selections; adjustable strength; brew-pause; warming plate with auto shutoff

Item number 3 is what the Shock Coffee webmaster loves the most. NO SUBSCRIPTION! Whew! One less password to remember!

Thanksgiving Contest Winners!

Congratulations to:
Daniel from Omaha, Nebraska
Dallas from West Jordan, Utah
and
Sandy from Overland Park, Kansas
for being the first to answer the 3 Thanksgiving trivia questions from our latest newsletter.

To recap, the questions, with answers were:
1. Which U.S. President made Thanksgiving a national holiday?
A: Abraham Lincoln, by Presidential Proclamation in 1863

2. What part of the turkey is used in a good luck ritual?
A: The Wishbone

3. Each Thanksgiving, the U.S. President is presented with a live turkey. What does he do with this turkey?
A: He pardons it.

The winners will receive some Shock Coffee products. To participate in Shock Coffee's trivia contests, click here to sign up for our newsletter.

Happy Thanksgiving from Shock Coffee, and drive safe everyone!

Holiday Coffee Ideas

As Thanksgiving approaches, and we prepare to make our first steps to gaining the first few pounds of our winter weight gain, Shock Coffee has culled the Internet to find a few coffee based recipes guaranteed to go over great at your Thanksgiving feast.

Carrot Cake
http://www.ineedcoffee.com/00/10/carrot/

Coffee Cookies
http://www.ineedcoffee.com/05/coffeecokies/

Chocolate Coffee Clusters
http://coffeetea.about.com/od/coffeedesserts/r/clusters.htm

Coffee Cheesecake
http://www.coffeeandteawarehouse.com/index.cfm?method=recipes.recipe&recipeid=24

Hopefully, when your done with your fine repast, there will be some left over goodies for you in the morning!

A must have for the office!

Now someone has finally gotten the right idea for the modern office environment.

The very, very thoughtful folks over at Konic Minolta have developed what we consider to be the pinnicle of office technology. Their new Bizhub prototype printer has the standard function that we have all come to know; it copies, it scans, it prints, it faxs... we have heard it all before.

But this new prototype has a DVD drive and LCD monitor for watching movies, and get ready for the good part, a built in espresso machine!

Does it get any better than that? You don't even need to step away from the printer for a pick me up cup of coffee while you wait for all those copies to finish up.

We wonder if you could get more pages per minute if you used some Shock Coffee in that thing... Something to consider.

More good news about coffee!

This story posted in USA Today talk about a new study showing some of the positive effects of coffee on a person's health. Here is a piece of the article:

The human research seems to suggest that caffeine might shield the brain from
subtle problems with forgetfulness — a possible early sign of Alzheimer's.

• A study of more than 600 men published in the August European Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that coffee drinkers may be protected from mild memory and thinking problems that come with old age.
• A 2002 study in the European Journal of Neurology found that people who consumed more caffeine in midlife appeared to be protected from developing Alzheimer's later on.

Studies on caffeine and Alzheimer's are just starting to roll in, but the literature on
Parkinson's is well established:

• A study of more than 8,000 men in the Journal of the American Medical Association by G. Webster Ross and colleagues found that those who drank the most coffee (more than three cups a day) were the least likely to get Parkinson's.
• Another large study, published in 2003 in the Journal of Neurological Sciences, found that tea and coffee drinkers were protected from Parkinson's.

See? We not only keep you going and get you up in the morning, we keep you healthy too!

Boss, you look tired.

As reported in the Scottish newspaper, The Daily Record, ONE in five bosses never take a coffee break.

We here at Shock Coffee are outright concerned. It shouldn't ever come to that. Sure, you could say we are overreacting given that 80% of bosses do take a coffee break, but we say 20% is worth our concern.

Now, bosses of Scotland, and indeed the entire working work, please take your coffee break!

Its good for your health, it relieves stress, its good for employee moral, its just good.

Caffeine? You can't escape!

Here we go! This story on CNN again demonstrates you just can't get away from caffeine.

Might we suggest if you are looking to avoid caffeine, that you skip the decaf and go with a nice cup of hot water.

Otherwise, you might just forget the whole notion and skip on over to the Shock Coffee site and pick yourself up a starter kit and get on with your day. ;)