Companies are turning to exploration to ensure future coffee supplies because production has leveled off even as demand has increased, causing coffee-bean prices to quadruple since 2001.

WSJ: The Indiana Jones of Coffee

But the intelligent coffee table of the future may be the central computing device in your home.

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Their methods are not sophisticated, often using jars or tin coffee cans to organize payments for future deliveries of chips or soda, yet their desire to improve their condition remains just as deeply ingrained.

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Then over coffee, they might discuss the future of Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, Benedict's trusted aide who has had the difficult task of escorting his old pope into retirement and then returning to the Vatican to serve his successor in the initial rites of the office.

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Traders bought and sold 'future' contracts - an agreement to buy coffee, say, in three months time at a certain price - protecting themselves from the worry that a crop failure might drive up the price of coffee in the intervening months.

BBC: Hedging - a rough guide

He saw a strong future for the company in the premium sector of the coffee market, which had undergone significant changes in the past decade or so.

CNN: Italy must adapt to survive, Illy boss warns

Atlanta (CNN) -- Imagine a near future when a single touch on your tablet or smartphone will start your coffee maker, lock your doors, turn on (or off) the lights and open a window.

CNN: Doug Gross,

Both predicting the future of work and designing for it (whether as a corporate HR executive, a coffee shop owner, a vendor of virtual-work technologies or an entrepreneur developing a co-working space) involves thinking about a messy and complicated bundle of ideas with at least a couple of dozen major dimensions.

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