I like the promise of pico projectors. You can get a much larger viewable image for movie watching, games, or presentations using one rather than a laptop screen. The reality is most of them are not bright enough to be useful in the real world.

Optoma has a new pico projector called the PK301 that is up for pre-order on Amazon. The device sells for $399.99 and you get free 2-day shipping if you pre-order.

Other than playing games on my iPhone, I have never had a real desire for mobile gaming. My son has a PSP (which he never plays) and a Nintendo DS, which gets player a lot. I just stick with the iPhone.

The announcement of the coming Nintendo 3DS has me intrigued though. I especially like that you don’t need glasses for 3D games. We aren’t sure what screens the device will use at this point or even what it will look like, but I hope it looks like this concept.

Last week Shuttle shipped a new SFF gaming machine called the J1 4100G. Today shuttle has announced that it is shipping a workstation version of the J1 along with a G2 7600P SFF workstation.

Presumably, the machines are similar except one uses Intel hardware and the other uses AMD. I will assume the J1 4100P uses Intel hardware since the gaming version does. The machine can be had with Core 2 Duo or Quad processors and NVIDIA Quadro graphics.

There were some doubters, but most of us knew that Apple was going to sell a significant number of iPads when it launched. The iPad had a large number of pre-orders and many expected shortages of the device.

With Saturday come and gone, the iPad is official and Apple says it sold 300,000 of the devices Saturday. Reports say that most locations had stock even late in the day on Saturday indicating that Apple had enough iPads to meet demand.

Here are the numbers. 300,000 iPads were sold, leading to 1,000,000 app downloads, and 250,000 ebook downloads from the iBook Store.

The original iPhone sold 270,000 units in the first 30 hours. So 300,000 is pretty impressive. Remember, many are holding out for the 3G version next month and this was a US-only launch. Not bad at all. But then we knew they would have no trouble selling them.

The People of Lava are coming. They are probably crawling out of volcanoes right now and setting the world on fire. Wait, it’s not 2012 yet. Who the hell are the people of lava? The Swedes of course. Who else would offer a set like the one above, called Scandanavia. And the company name gets your attention right?

Scandinavia is their first Android 1.5 42-inch full-HD backlit LED set. It goes into beta testing this summer and on sale in September, followed by 47-inch and 55-inch sets soon after. It will come with apps like Facebook, YouTube, Google Maps, and Twitter, along with a web browser and email client, while other apps will be available from the People of Lava App Store.

We’ve never seen a toothbrush like this one before. These Hammacher Schlemmer super toothbrushes promise to clean all of your teeth in just 40 seconds. This bizarre looking device looks like it was designed to brush Predator teeth. It has four heads that will clean the front, back, and chewing surface of your top and bottom teeth all at the same time.

The brushes do their thing 810 times per minute and are mounted on self-adjusting pivoting heads. Sounds like a powerful cleaning. It uses two AA batteries which will give you 60 uses after a full 12-hour charge. It comes with four soft bristle brush heads and a tongue cleaner.

Hyundai’s newest luxury sedan, the Equus, was just revealed at the New York Auto Show and one of the more interesting things about it is that it won’t come with a paper owner’s manual. Instead it will come with an iPad, allowing customers to make vehicle service appointments wirelessly.

Pretty nice marketing gimmick. Hopefully it will have some apps that will do a little more for the owner. At about $50 or $60K, it’s the least they can do. Heck, they should throw in a whole Apple package.

Remember the old days when TVs were more a piece of furniture? They were stylish and had substance and they were so heavy that once you put it in it’s place, it stayed there forever. TVs have slimmed down a lot since then and they’ve lost all of their good looks with the weight.

Halden-Caviglia TV sets want to bring back the retro TV using today’s technology. You can choose a screen between 42 inches and 65 inches in a bunch of Art Deco and American Craftsman styles, and the company even offers an IR repeater so your remote can communicate with the TV through all of that wood.

It happens to the best of us. There’s always something in the back of the fridge that should have been eaten a long time ago. But now, whatever it used to be, is furry, moldy and putrid. That’s an easy call. Just toss it out. But what about something you are unsure of. It might be safe, might not be.

Designer Yeom Ha-na has come up with the Foodmer, which is basically a custom programmed expiration date reminder for all your fresh food. Not many details about how it works, but apparently you can program each strip with a freshness duration, and the red line will slowly get longer until its throw away time.

DIYers all know about using a Dremmel, but sometimes what you need is a bench sander. Suppose you don’t have one? Well, just use an old hard drive. It turns out they make a pretty handy bench sander. This DIYer opened up an older hard drive, removed the read head, and added a piece of cut sand paper.

Yes, it doesn’t seem like it would do much, but check out the video below. Just hook it up to your bench supply and you’ve got a small sander ready to use.

If you think that the 50GB capacity of Blu-ray discs just isn’t enough, then we have some good news for you. The new BDXL format will offer a capacity of up to 128GB (write once), or 100GB (rewritable).

As is often the problem with breakthroughs like this, there is some bad news as well. You will likely need a new player to use these discs. That’s because it uses three to four layers, so you need a more powerful laser. The format is an extension, so they may be made to work with existing devices, but we aren’t sure what kind of capacities that would yield.

Here’s an interesting iPad app that turns your iPad into a secondary monitor. Shape Services iDisplay connects your iPad to your Mac desktop and lets you wirelessly extend your screen onto your iPad’s display.

It will also work on the iPhone, but I’m not sure why you would want to use your iPhone for this. Right now it’s version 1.0 product, so I’m sure they have some bugs to work out, but the users who have problems are using iPhones. It’s a great idea.

The folks at Computer Choppers just love dipping consoles in gold, like this 24-karat Xbox 360. With a plain jane Xbox you just have to worry about the Red Ring Of Death. With this $5,000 purchase, you have that to worry about and plus you might die at your wife’s hand.

The Xbox and its controller have both received the beautiful golden sheen. You don’t have to be filthy rich, but it helps. In which case, it goes well with all of your other blinged out stuff.

This hat won’t allow you to pull an Easter rabbit out of it, but it does contain a USB hub. As the image shows, you can create your own rabbit ears using wires.

At long last struggling magicians have their own USB hub. Which is good news for them, because up until now their greatest trick has been making their own careers disappear. This might get them back in the game now that they have office jobs, allowing them to turn their cubicle into an office magic show. The cables magically plug into the hat.