On Monday Google unveiled what they are calling a “next-generation infrastructure” for their web search, and they are asking the public to give it a try. The “secret” project has been underway for months according to a recent post on the Google Indexing blog, and is almost complete. According to the post, the new system “…will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions”.

Google has codenamed the new underlying search indexing “caffeine”, and is looking for the general public to give it a try and provide feedback in the way of differences between the new and old. The new indexing can be tried out at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/, where you can do a search and see if you can tell any difference in the results. According to the blog post from Google, they are only looking for feedback in differences at this time.

Most people drink coffee for the caffeine, whether to help them wake up or stay alert, but some people drink it because they like the taste and don’t want to get the crazy jitters associated with the drink. For these people, who don’t want to be fooled into drinking the go juice, there are the D+caf strips.

These strips allow you to tell whether or not some dork at a coffee shop gave you caffeine, when you actually ordered decaf. Just dip the strip in and it will change colors if it detects more than 20mg of caffeine. And because you detected it, you are still calm enough not to throw it at the dude.