27APR2025: My coffee-soaked corner of tech nerdom
A beautiful new espresso machine, a smart weather app, magic headphone tech, a hot new wallet, and more.
Happy Sunday everyone!
This week has been action-packed with the preorder for the Nintendo Switch 2 opening in the U.S., Slate debuting a $20k American-made electric pickup truck that actually looks kinda awesome, electronic producer Moby releasing 500 songs for free for nearly unlimited commercial and non-commercial use, and Simon gave Mac users everything they need to set their computer on fire and smash it with a hammer.
Meanwhile, I went down to Houston as a correspondent for CoffeeGeek to cover the Specialty Coffee Association Expo— I've got a few articles up on the site already with more to come over the week ahead. If you're at all in to the intersection of coffee and tech, go take a look!
On to the good stuff!
☕ Fellow Espresso Series 1 - Among several big coffee announcements this week, the big one in my coffee-soaked corner of tech nerdom was Fellow's entry into the home espresso space with their countertop Series 1 Espresso machine. Apart from looking sleek and beautiful, as is their tradition, the Espresso Series 1 strikes an interesting balance in offering distinct features for both beginners and for seasoned barista pros. From newbie-friendly things like a digital display giving you feedback on your shot timing/grind size and temperature-guided automatic milk frothing, to pro features like adjustable pressure, flow, and temperature profiles, the Series 1 packs a lot of tech into a good-looking and surprisingly competitive price point. I got to try a shot pulled from it this weekend while at the SCA Expo, and wrote up my first impressions for CoffeeGeek, in case you want to go down the rabbit hole.
🎙 DJI Mic Mini* - This is probably a somewhat niche recommendation, but I knew I would be conducting a lot of formal and informal interviews at the SCA Coffee Expo this weekend and I wanted a hands-free way to capture the audio of the conversations. I settled on the DJI Mic Mini and was extremely pleased with the size and quality of these tiny, wireless lapel-borne microphones. Interestingly, the Mic Mini is the smaller and cheaper sibling to the DJI Mic 2, but somehow manages to have both longer battery life and greater range for wandering away from the camera or audio receiver. I kept one transmitter on my shirt and the receiver plugged into my iPhone in my pocket, and just recorded straight to my Voice Notes app for quick transcription. Just that one mic was enough to capture both sides of the conversation even in the crowded, noisy exposition hall.
☀️ Lume GPT Weather for iOS — On the recommendation of friend of the blog, Slow Brewed Studio, I've been trying out this new GPT-powered hyper-local weather app. I don't think it's going to replace Carrot Weather, my favorite slightly homicidal weather app, but I do appreciate its unique proposition of leveraging over 200 weather data points in combination with AI to help you plan the absolute best times in the day to do outdoor activities like running, going for a walk, taking photos and more. Simply choose what you want to do, Lume will crunch the weather data, and return a time window along with an explanation of why that's the optimal time.
✈️ AirFly Pro 2* - The wizards over at 12South recently released an update to their awesome AirFly dongle which lets you turn any headphone auxiliary jack into an audio device to which you can connect your AirPods or other Bluetooth headphones. Although originally designed for use on planes to be able to use your own wireless headphones to watch inflight movies, I find it useful for using my AirPods with retro gaming handhelds during late night gaming sessions when I want to listen to the chip tunes without disturbing my partner. This new version now has buttons to make it easier to pair up to two sets of headphones simultaneously without needing to use a splitter.
💰 Evergoods Bi-Fold Wallet - I'm a sucker for a good minimalist slim wallet, and this week the folks at my favorite bag manufacturer, Evergoods, introduced exactly that. They did some engineering magic to make the wallet out of a seamless single piece of insanely thin but water-resistant fabric, while making it easy to organize 6-8 cards and access your bills, regardless of their size. At $70, it's hard for me to justify replacing my Allett wallet that is still developing a lovely patina, but this would be a good contender if I were in the market.
That's it for this week, be happy, healthy, and at peace everyone!
*Asterisks indicate links that may generate a small commission to support the site at no extra cost to you. These links are not sponsored, and I have no relationship with the makers of these products.