With netbook sales booming, sales of other computers like ultra portables are feeling the pinch. The problem is that many ultraportables only offer marginally improved performance compared to netbooks and often cost significantly more.

DigiTimes reports that Asus is getting ready to unveil new ultra-thin computers using new 45nm Intel CPUs for power savings. The CPUs to be used are the 45nm Celeron 743 and the SU2300. The machines are said to be launching on September 7.

Apple has been increasingly getting into bed with NVIDIA when it comes to GPUs for its line of notebooks. The problem is that many of the 9400 series NVIDIA GPUs that the company put inside Apple machines failed.

This opened the door for AMD and the company has announced that its video cards are now found inside the new iMac and Mac Pro computer systems. AMD reports that the new video cards support Snow Leopard’s OpenCL 1.0 implementation.

Some devices suffer from an identity crisis. Like this guy, the USB Cassette MP3 Player. It’s designed to look like your run of the mill outdated plastic cassette, and is even the same size, so that it fits into your vehicle’s cassette deck (assuming you still have one) for portability. It also sports an SD memory card slot that holds all of your songs in flash memory.

Just drag and drop to transfer your files from a computer. The memory size is only limited by the size of your SD memory card. It will cost you $22 and has all of the usual buttons to control audio playback and volume on one side. So is it just an updated cassette or an MP3 player?

Halloween is just around the corner. There’s no reason you can’t dress your gadgets up in something spooky as well. Here are some cool Halloween costumes for your iPhone 3G or 3G S. The Demon Silicone Series Case for iPhone 3G/ 3GS turns your iPhone into a demon complete with horns.

In front it looks like your iPhone is being eaten, and on the back there is an image of a demon with hands. And of course, the case glows in the dark. The Demon Silicone Case comes in blue, yellow, white, green, and purple.

Over the ear headphones have always been the victim of some pretty boring design for the most part. Now there’s a company doing something about it. Headphile will take your high end headphones and turn them into works of art. They do custom headphone mods using fine and exotic woods.

Don’t worry, you won’t lose any functionality. They also create custom headphone stands to match the designs on the headphones if you like. They will also improve on the original headphones by upgrading the wiring, adding better cables, or new speaker grills or wooden enclosures.

Forget the PS3 Slim. This is the kind of PS3 you want. The only game it plays involves you shoveling cake into your mouth as fast as you can.

The controllers are made from rice crispy treats, so forget mashing buttons, you’ll be mashing your teeth into them like a madman as you slide ever closer to a diabetic coma. And even though this confectionery console may not have a slew of worthwhile games at the moment, the ones it does have are delicious.

French-based Bonitor has released a pair of new mini projectors for the mass market. The MP201 shown above and the MP301. Both projectors feature a native resolution of 640 x 480 4:3 pixels along with 15 lumens of brightness, a 1.57/1.62 throw ratio and a rechargeable battery.

The MP201 is specially designed for game consoles, DVD/Blu-ray disc players, mobile phone and portable media players and only has a Composite Video input. The MP301 on the other hand geared toward desktop computers, laptop, netbook and UMPC, and features USB and VGA connectors.

You know what we need more of? Spider bots. Even if they are four legs short of a full spider. What you see here is a walking machine using only four legs. And we have to say it’s walking is impressive. Should you flip it over, it’s no problem. The legs simply reverse and it walks upside down.

It’s an entertaining little bot to watch. Just beware, if you want to build one, it’s expensive, costing around $1000. The coolest feature though, is that it’s controlled with two sets of modified Wii Nunchucks.

Man, hot dogs are such a pain to make. First you have to open the package, spill nasty hot dog juice all over the place, put them in the pan and boil them. Who has time for all of that work and clean up? Not you and not I. That’s why you go to 7-11 and get them off of their rotisserie.

Well, now you can do it the way 7-11 does it with this Hot Dog Rotisserie. It cooks 4 hot dogs on the non-stick rollers and can warm two buns at once. The fat from the hot dogs or sausages drips down into an easy to clean tray so you stay nice and healthy. Well, as healthy as you can be eating hot dogs.

We all know that if you want to get into the racing game, it takes a lot of cash. Scratch. Benjamins. Dough. Bread. Oh yes, it takes a lot of bread. Actual bread made by bakers in this case. A bunch of crazy chefs got together and created a Formula One racing car with 22 different types of bread.

The Culinary Executive Chef from the Royal Plaza On Scotts in Singapore led a team of six chefs, two artists, two technicians, two culinary staff members and five volunteers to create this bread-winner. They call ‘Asia’s Largest Race Car Made From Bread’. It took 33 pounds of yeast alone, 14 liters of water, 4.4 pounds of salt and around three gallons of varnish.

We’ve seen all kinds of digital photo frames, but this one comes in a retro form, looking like a retro TV. Which is a much cooler form than what we typically see. This one comes from Japan’s mag labs.

It packs in a small 3.5 inch screen with a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels, with 128 mb of memory and an SD card slot. It won’t play I love Lucy or Leave it to Beaver, but it does support playback of AVI and MP3 files and is powered by AC adapter or the built in Lithium Ion battery.

Dinosaurs are extinct, so they don’t care if we abuse their action figures to make USB drives. They can’t bite us and swallow us in one gulp. They can’t even get mad about it because they are gone and we rule the Earth. To quote that kid from The Simpsons, HA HA.

This T-Rex Dinosaur USB drive from Etsy comes with a prehistoric 2GB of storage and has a USB connector hidden inside of its head. The drive is compatible with Windows and Mac and will cost you $28.

We all love the old NES cartridges. They bring back memories of hours of fun playing the old console. So we love any excuse to have them back in our lives today. Like with these NES cartridge hard drives.

Etsy seller 8-Bit Memory takes old NES cartridges, stuffs a hard drive inside and just like that Mario is holding your data. It will cost you $120 for 250GB, but he will gladly make any size for you and with any cartridge. For an extra fee of course.

We like unusual lamps here, but this one goes beyond morbid. Sure, these hangman lights are cool and creative, but would you really want these things hanging around above you? Maybe if you have a really dark sense of humor.

They might be good for Halloween, or to decorate your old west jail, but I just can’t see many people wanting to hang these. Thankfully, this is just a concept from designer Ji-youn Kim. What do you guys think? Would you hang these guys in your home?

MIPS Technologies along with Sigma Designs demonstrated an Android-based set-top box that is capable of 1080p video. It’s being hailed as “a major milestone toward the creation of a reference platform” that will allow Android-based devices to enter your living room.

They’ve made enhancements to Android libraries and the MIPS architecture so that the OS can run on a full-sized display at HD resolutions, rather than small handset displays. The specific Sigma SoC (system-on-chip) used for the prototype is unknown, but it may be the SMP8640-series chip already used in Blu-ray players and other video devices.