Samsung has now priced its four-door, Energy Star-rated LCD refrigerator and it is just as expensive as you might expect at $3,499 retail. It will arrive late next month. The RF4289 fridge offers 28 cubic feet of storage, including a customizable, counter-height “flex-zone” drawer with a moveable divider. This is for serious food eaters/storage enthusiasts.

It also features LED lighting and Samsung’s twin coolingplus system that separately circulates the air inside the freezer and refrigerator to eliminate odor and keep perishable produce fresher for a longer period of time. If that isn’t enough, there’s an 8-inch, Wi-Fi-enabled LCD touchscreen too, which includes several apps, including Epicurious, Weatherbug, Pandora, AP News, Google Calendar, Picasa Photos and Twitter.

Any parent will tell you that with kids around you are going to end up cleaning goo off the strangest places. I have had to clean peanut butter off the back of the refrigerator (don’t ask) and have spent more time than I care to talk about with a tooth pick and a paper towel trying to get chocolate out of the crevices of my Harmony One remote control.

A company called Gluvi has a new sanitary solution for remote controls that looks to me like a condom for your remote. The thing has an open end and slips over the remote to protect the keys from germs. I bet it works pretty well for keeping chocolate fingers away too.

It’s a common practice around the world. You open the fridge and then just stand looking at all of your choices. Problem is you are wasting electricity and letting the cold out. The Window Fridge is a concept that eliminates the need to open the fridge, by providing a window.

That helps save the environment while you ponder whether you would like a Coke, Pepsi or Dr. Pepper. The fridge has a tube design that makes it easy to open the panel and spy on all of your food inside.

Ok this is clearly for you folks who have obese roommates that steal all of your food. Which you pay for. This thing ought to keep your food secure and out of Jabba’s grasp. Great for helping you or someone else stick to your diet too.

Sure it looks like food jail, but your food is being protected not punished. And it’s only $20 and fits inside your refrigerator, secured with a chrome metal lock which you can set to any combination you want.

The future of beer is in a box thanks to some inside-of-the-box thinking. The $20, 1.5-gallon boxes of beer are designed for beer drinkers who prefer their beer from the tap but also don’t mind if that tap is a box. Currently they are testing boxes of Miller Lite and Coors Lite in select cities and they plan to expand it nationwide this football season.

In case you were wondering, 1.5 gallons equals 16 bottles. So you’ll be paying $1.25 per bottle, which is more expensive than buying a 12-pack of bottles. Hey, you have to pay for innovation.

Convergence is a great thing in the gadgets we know and love today. For instance the iPhone is a great converged device that can replace a GPS system, phone, MID, and MP3 player with one device. Convergence is usually associated with technology products, but not always.

A converged refrigerator is now being offered by a company aptly called MicroFridge. The device combines four things that the average college geek needs to make life livable. In one device you get a fridge, freezer, microwave, and a charging station for your gadgets.

In a great bit of marketing, LG is attempting to lure consumers toward its latest energy efficient refrigerator with an unusual launch. The company has designed a 70-meter long container ship disguised as their new refrigerator.

The football field sized ship/refrigerator sailed up the Seine from Le Havre to Paris between June 22 and June 25. The company brags that the refrigerator consumes low power, though we aren’t confident that the worldwide launch of this new LG side-by-side refrigerator was anywhere near environmentally-friendly. But it is clever.

So, how do you upgrade the old pizza order and make the whole process greener? US Patent 7,051,919 has the answer. The Pizza Box is perforated and tears, converting itself into plates. It’s the future of pizza and would help save water as you don’t have to wash the plates.

A simple yet effective idea. It’s called the Green Box. The bottom is also perforated so you can fold it into a new box that conveniently fits in your refrigerator. That’s damn convenient.

Any parent knows the type of toys LeapFrog makes. The company has a line of educational toys that teach kids of all sorts of things like phonics and math. My kids have a set of refrigerator magnets they play with constantly from the company that teaches phonics. If I hear “every letter makes a sound” one more time I may snap.

LeapFrog is now moving from the refrigerator onto my iPhone with the introduction of the company’s first iPhone App called Number Rumble. The game is a math quiz program that helps kids six to ten years old learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Sometimes, when you’re grilling a piece of meat, you want to add some smoke flavor. Perfectly understandable. Though you may not realize it, other foods taste good with a healthy does of smoke too, if this magic refrigerator box thing is any indication. Add some smoke flavor to anything. Mac and cheese, steak, chicken, peanut butter and jelly, eggs…

The Smokin’ Tex Hot-or-Cold Smoker lets you add that smoky taste to any and every food you want. Just add some wood chips in the smoker box, select the temperature and close the door. It’s completely insulated so you won’t smoke up the house and capable of smoking up to 38 pounds of meat, or whatever.

A research team at Stanford has developed a refrigeration device the size of a thermos. What’s interesting is that it uses no electricity. Zip. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Instead, it contains some kind of coolant that becomes cold when it’s exposed to heat.

Details are scarce, but the units would be fairly cheap to produce at about $50. The price makes it an ideal way to deliver medicines and cold water to developing countries as well as having a bunch of other uses a bit more noble then your next camping trip. It’s a great breakthrough. All a user would need to cool any given thing is fire, which is readily available.

This may be the best grill ever. They say that dogs are man’s best friend, but that’s just not true. A grill is a man’s best friend. The way to our hearts is through our stomachs after all. This grill has such features as an optional built-in CD/stereo system to keep you entertained while flipping steaks and burgers.

The 875 square inches of grill island is all about convenience and letting you cook like a pro. Some other features include: 79,000 BTU’s, infrared rotisserie burner, side burner, digital temperature controls, dual zone cooking, smart touch screen, pre-programmed food setting icons and built-in meat probe, as well as a tank caddy pullout. The grill can even be upgraded to include a refrigerator and sink.

If you like your soda full of fizz, and love bar style beer taps, you might want to check out the Fizz Saver. It’s not rocket science, just screw the Fizz Saver onto your 2-liter bottle of soda, put the base on a flat surface, and you’re good to go.

Instant soda dispenser. It’s for those who like their soda like Hugh Hefner likes his woman: bubbly and buoyant instead of flat. There’s no explanation as to how it keeps your drinks carbonated. Probably helps that you won’t be unscrewing the cap several times and losing carbonation.

Check out this collapsible Soft-Refrigerator concept by Electrolux. It proves once again that an accordion design works great. Through the use of a heat-insulating membranes and modular shelving, this fridge can actually be collapsed and optimized for size. Because sometimes you don’t have a lot of food or you need more room in the kitchen.

When you collapse the fridge there’s less space inside that needs to be cooled, thereby reducing your energy use. Plus it looks kinda futuristic. Who wouldn’t want a collapsible fridge? Let’s say you go shopping on Monday. By Friday,you fridge is waist high again.

In the future all beasts of burden will have solar powered backs so that they can better serve man. Look how well it’s working out for the camel. The solar cells power a small refrigerator, which allows them to deliver heat-sensitive vaccines to remote health centers in Africa.

It’s an ingenious solution to getting them from point A to point B intact. When refrigeration isn’t needed, the solar system even provides lighting at the clinic. It’s win/win. Despite being in the desert, the sun doesn’t always shine and for those times they have a foot-powered generator.