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Amazon's Alexa has plenty going for it. Developers have trained the virtual assistant with over 10,000 “skills”—apps you talk to instead of tap—to do everything from hailing a Lyft to checking your stock portfolio. At home, Alexa can control the lights, set timers, play your local NPR station, and generally achieve that Jarvis-level assistance that feels so much like the future. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Not even wine snobs are as hardcore as coffee snobs. To pour a great glass of wine, you need a corkscrew and some money. To pour a great cup of coffee, you need beans, gear, time and patience. There is a process, you see. It is complex and requires study. Any gray areas must be marked off as personal territory and argued over. Nothing unleashes righteous indignation in otherwise pleasant people more than coffee. Recently, the venerable kitchen-and-housewares brand Oxo stepped into the bean brewer fray. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The biggest trend in the e-bike industry today is the “S-pedelic.” If you’re still riding a beach cruiser, here’s the intel: “Pedelic” is shorthand for “pedal electric cycle,” which means that the rider’s expended energy is assisted by a small motor. Add that “S” prefix and things change drastically. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The seventh season of Game of Thrones opens in its most infamous locale: The Twins. This was the place where the story shattered—where the rules of Westeros, the rules of hospitality, the rules of fantasy stories themselves sheared away from themselves like a great wall of ice and floated away into the sea. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Like many cyclists who consider themselves purists, I’ve had difficulty wrapping my brain around the increasing popularity of e-bikes: Worldwide sales tallied 36 million units in 2016. German postal workers use e-bikes on their routes, and in the US, major bike manufacturers like Specialized, Cannondale, and Trek have introduced a surprising array of motorized options, from off-road fatties to commuters. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

So you got yourself a brand new Amazon Echo Dot. Congratulations! You'll get along great with it. But before you start yelling at your shiny new toy, take a quick look at the full range of what it can do for you. It's more than you might have imagined. The tips and tricks below also mostly work for, well, any Alexa-powered device. There are a ton of them out there, and while they may not be as puckish (both in the hockey and Shakespearean sense), they could all benefit from a quick primer. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Streaming killed the music gadget years ago. Just up and drove a stake through its silicon heart as listeners traded 99-cent song downloads for $10 monthly subscriptions to all-you-can-listen services. OK, maybe you have some Baby Driver-induced nostalgia for an iPod. But when was the last time you ripped a CD, or dropped 15 bucks on an album? Even the idea of choosing 5,000 songs to carry with you and plugging something into a computer to load them seems like an ancient ritual. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In the kitchen, people have an amazing tolerance for imprecision. Ovens might say 400 degrees, but many regularly veer 20 degrees above or below that mark, if it’s calibrated correctly in the first place. On the stovetop, we don’t even have the specificity of degrees. Turn the dial up to “high” or “medium-low” or just “seven,” even though every manufacturer has a different standard for what that place on the dial means. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

How do you turn a smartphone-photo devotee into a bona fide camera nerd? You give them smartphone-style touchscreen controls on an excellent camera that connects to their mobile for easy sharing. This strategy—compress the complexities of a high-end camera into a smartphone-style interface—has shaped Leica 's playbook for its T-series cameras, the first of which arrived three years ago . Today Leica is announcing the newest member of the touchscreen-bedecked T family, the Leica TL2. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last week might have seemed like a short one thanks to the Fourth of July holiday, but as anyone who has ever been online knows, the internet doesn't sleep. So even while you were taking it easy, something was happening on social media. Like what? For one, everyone was talking about the photos that came out of President Trump's meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel at the G20 summit. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices