It's about time that Starbucks offered weary consumers a little energy with their oversized caffeinated beverages. The coffee chain and infectious disease spreader is now providing the option of a "+Energy" addition to any drink. The new energy formula contains B-vitamins, guarana, and ginseng, which is the same mixture that they toss in most canned energy drinks these days, along with eye-popping amounts of caffeine. What I would like to know is this: what one flavor could possibly taste palatable mixed with every single thing that Starbucks sells, from coffee to tea to fruit-flavored goop?

[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

The Yale Daily News has uncovered a bombshell: The University Dining Services-operated Thain Family Cafe secretly replaced its caffeinated espresso with decaf beans. They've been serving useless, unstimulating brown water to caffeine-fiending students since April 15, with no intention of revealing the ruse. This scrappy student paper got their hands on the documents that prove it: "An unsigned letter received by the News last week included a supposed photocopy of a Thain Café logbook entry from Feb. 29 that reads: 'We will also run out of reg. espresso and French roast most likely—secretly use decaf espresso to substitute the espresso—for the French, I don't know—I think we'll just have to be out.'" Cafe Manager Brian Yezierski denied the charges. But! Journalism!

Are you the type of consumer who's always been interested in trying that "Starbucks" that you've heard so much about, but are intimidated by its mysterious ways? In other words, are you a half-bright mole person? Well the company has a new website just for you! "What the online experience does is mimic the experience [consumers] would have in the store, if they went to the barista and said, 'I want to try Starbucks, but I don't know where to start,'" says one exec [Ad Age]. With StarbucksCoffeeAtHome.com, all the frightening guesswork is taken out of the coffee-going experience. What's your "flavor profile?"

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz dampened analyst expectations for the company's performance ahead of its April 30 quarterly earnings anouncement, sending shares tumbling 10.4 percent in after-hours trading. "The current economic environment is the weakest in our company's history," he said to explain why the company is facing the first quarterly profit decline in eight years. The retailer has long traded on being a relatively affordable yuppie status symbol, serving up a dose of psychological salve for four dollars a cup to an American middle class in decline. But it looks like Schultz's stunt to bloster the elite cachet of a brand now as ubiquitously plebeian as your local McDonald's might not be enough to fuel continued growth. (Photo by Peter Kaminski)

Despair is in order for those of you who balance out your vague sense of revulsion at visiting corporate Death Star and coffee shop Starbucks by telling yourself, "Well, at least I don't have to talk to anybody there." The company is now seriously considering promoting conversation in its stores. And the sunny, terrible people who frequent the Starbucks public suggestion factory, MyStarbucksIdea.com, think it's a "great idea!"

It's 1963 and this housewife had better find a better brand of coffee or her husband will taste a little of the secretary's, if you know what I mean (I mean he will sex them). As a reader said at Boing Boing, "It's like a teaser for season 2 of Mad Men!"

What exactly is Starbucks doing? They came out with their revolutionary, game-changing, not quite as burnt new house coffee last week, which pairs well with chocolate marble loaf. But along with the new $11,000 machines to make said coffee, the Death Star-like chain has introduced new coffee cups, and they're... brown? Was the design consultant who knows how to appeal to yuppies sick the day that decision was made? And now the company has bigger problems: McDonald's is determined to kick Starbucks' ass right where it lives. In Seattle!

Starbucks is set to begin selling a "smoother" - read: non-burnt - cup of coffee at all company-owned locations this morning. CEO Howard Schultz told the Journal the new roast is meant to "reinvent brewed coffee." Ah, so now properly roasting your beans makes you a revolutionary. That must be why the press release calls this day "historic" and the roast itself "historic." What could possibly be more hyperbolic than that? Oh, right, a brainwashed barista on StabucksGossip.com saying this will save the lives of children. I almost forgot!

A former Starbucks employee named Mary-Elise Smilek says she was fired after four years with the company, just because she couldn't attend last month's mandatory 3-hour retraining session/ PR stunt. She had a midterm to study for. Harsh! Now she's the subject of much debate among the bored employees and company drones at the Starbucks Gossip blog. Some say she's a hoax; some say she's a victim; and the most hardcore corporate robots say: she got what she deserved for not completely dedicating her life to the Starbucks cause!

Is this a cruel hoax? A Gawker Operative reports: "I just came from the Starbucks on Spring/Crosby and they got no hot coffee! They got water pressure problems. I fucking bought a frappucino!" This could cripple the internet media.

As part of its brave new plan to stop hemorrhaging money, Starbucks went out and bought a company called Clover that makes coffee machines. These Clovers cost $11,000 each, and brew one cup of coffee at a time. We're not math whizzes or anything, but at that rate, those better be some good fucking cups of coffee. So the New York Times sent a coffee connoisseur to taste seven kinds of beans from the new machine, and he came to the stunning conclusion: not even a magical $11,000 gadget can make burned coffee beans taste good.

The Starbucks high command had its annual shareholder meeting today in Seattle. The company's stock price has fallen by almost half in the past year. So what big changes are in store? Upgraded coffee makers, shorter espresso machines "that will allow baristas to interact more easily with customers," and other minor crap that probably won't change the fact that SBUX is the embodiment of corporate stealth penetration into the liberal American psyche. The company's big hope for redemption, though, is its newest customer-relations website, MyStarbucksIdea.com, where they solicit ideas for improvement from YOU, the consumer [WSJ]. If you have any great thoughts you should let them know immediately, because even the more popular suggestions on the site so far aren't exactly staggering works of turnaround genius:

A distressing new survey reveals that last month's Day Without A Starbucks—when the friendly coffee conglomerate closed for three hours in a gaudy PR stunt that placed the Olsen Twins in mortal peril—was a failure. While three quarters of all consumers knew that the closing happened, not even half knew why the closing took place [Ad Age]. Do you?

I'm a reporter, dammit, so after reading about today's all-hands training sessions at all Starbucks stores I walked over to the store at 333 Market in San Francisco's Financial District and asked my barista to explain, step by step, exactly what's new.

Yesterday almost every Starbucks in America closed for three hours in a widely publicized effort to retrain all the employees not to burn the damn coffee. No word yet on the status of the Olsen twins after the shutdown. The general consensus, which we agree with, is that this was as much a PR stunt as a retraining effort. And over at Starbucks Gossip, the definitive blog about the company (inexplicably run by King Of Journalism Jim Romenesko), the employee drones are doing their part by being INSANELY ENTHUSIASTIC about being dragged into work for three extra hours.

The best coffee in the city now has seating. Blue Bottle Coffee, a staple of the Embarcadero Farmer's Market and jaunts through Hayes Valley has finally opened a real coffee shop on a SoMa side street near the Moscone Convention Center. Go drink drip coffee (or sample some java from its $20,000 siphon bar) and be happy.

It would take a lot to pull San Francisco's bloggers out of their default Starbucks habitats, but with a new, cheap line of espresso drinks and its free Wi-Fi, McDonald's may well yet lure poor newsfeed slaves to its golden arches. While the constant aroma of fried food may not be the most appealing work environment, neither is the modern-day Starbucks.

It may be a bad idea to code on heroin, but caffeine gets a four star review from one programmer. If that's the case, Meth Coffee may be just what the coder ordered. The San Francisco-based company promises its coffee will brighten "house chores and cut boredom like a goddamn razor." It's quite a promise considering it's just a plain bag of coffee with a little guarana thrown in there, but the name alone should sell the stimulant to sleepy programmers.