Skip to main content

Use this app to step up your coffee game and brew the perfect cup

Coffee snobs, hold onto your fedoras — there’s a fresh new app out for iOS that helps you fine-tune your brew with the utmost precision, thereby taking your snobbery to a whole new level and bringing you ever closer to the perfect brew.

The app is called Brewsful, and it’s basically like a tricked out egg timer, but designed specifically for coffee. With its incredibly simple interface, it allows you tweak your brewing process and figure out exactly how long to pour, mix, and steep — the idea being that, after a while, you’ll be able to nail down the perfect process and save the exact recipe for future reference.

Recommended Videos

To start, you input things like the method you use to brew (French press, pour-over, Chemex, etc.), the coarseness, cup size, and optimal coffee-to-water ratio. Once you’ve got everything calibrated, the app will walk you through the brewing process from start to finish, and offer up simple visual/audio cues when it’s time to start/stop pouring, time to stir the brew, and time to pick up your cup and enjoy.

Obviously, you don’t need these kinds of detailed directions to make a simple cup of joe, but Brewsful isn’t for making a simple, average-tasting coffee — it’s about the subtle science of brewing beans, and experimenting until you get the chemistry just right.

You can find out more here, or head over to the App Store to try it out for yourself.

Drew Prindle
Senior Editor, Features
Drew Prindle is an award-winning writer, editor, and storyteller who currently serves as Senior Features Editor for Digital…
How to use Alexa in your car
Alexa in car, photo Erin Lawrence, alexa auto

Smart digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and the Google Assistant are infinitely helpful entities, at least until you depart the house. Now, it’s possible to access your virtual butler while on the road, too -- Alexa is being offered in vehicles. What can Alexa actually do in the car, though, and is it helpful?

Let’s dig in to discover how well it works and whether it adds to the overall driving experience. If you want a primer on using Alexa devices in the home, check out our article all about what Alexa is and how it works, or read our Amazon Echo Show (2nd-gen) review.
What can Amazon Alexa Built-in do in your car?
For starters, let’s differentiate between the various Alexa products for your car. There is Alexa Built-in, which comes factory-installed in some new vehicles (see which ones here). If you have an older car but still want to get some smarts, you can add Echo Auto as an aftermarket module (learn how to install Alexa in your car). For the sake of this article, we’ll focus on the Built-in version, since it’s more reliable and connected than the add-on version.

Read more
Ultraloq showcases the first-ever ultra-wideband smart lock at CES 2025
Bolt Mission UWB + NFC installed on a white door.

Ultraloq showed off two smart locks at CES 2025 -- one of which is the first smart lock to ever offer ultra-wideband (UWB) support. The Ultraloq Bolt Mission UWB + NFC uses UWB technology to unlock automatically as you approach your front door. Similar functionality already exists on other smart locks, but UWB should allow the Ultraloq Bolt Mission to be more accurate than the competition.

The Bolt Mission uses technology similar to digital car keys, and Ultraloq says it can track the keyholder’s phone location with “centimeter-level” accuracy. As your phone gets closer to the front door, the Bolt Mission can be programmed to automatically unlock, giving you a hands-free way to get inside. Better yet, because the smart lock can detect both your distance and direction from the front door, it should prevent you from accidentally unlocking the smart lock while inside your home.

Read more
Ulticam shows off three AI-powered security cameras at CES 2025
The Ulticam IQ installed outside a home.

Ulticam, the new security camera brand of Xthings, revealed a lineup of three AI-powered cameras at CES 2025. The Ulticam IQ, Ulticam IQ Floodlight, and Ulticam Dot offer not just cool AI capabilities, but also free seven-day cloud storage -- which could make them a solid choice for value-minded shoppers leery about signing up for monthly storage plans.

The Ulticam IQ and IQ Floodlight are the main attractions, as they're packed with features that should pose solid competition for the best smart security cameras from Arlo, Nest, and Ring. The duo uses edge AI to quickly identify people, vehicles, and packages without needing to upload the video for server-side processing. This onboard processing should result in faster performance -- it’s also great for privacy and security, as your footage doesn’t have to leave your device.

Read more