When Apple unveiled the iPad 2, they also advertised a new video converter that was designed to mirror whatever is displayed on the tablet’s screen to an external HDMI display by upscaling content to full HD 1080p resolution. This one plays nice with any third-party app and when it comes to games, the $39 Apple Digital AV Adapter upscales graphics from the iPad’s native 1024 by 768 pixel resolution to full HD 1920 by 1080 resolution.

That means you won’t have those annoying black bars on your screen. Don’t you hate those? The PowerVR SGX543MP2, the GPU unit of the A5 chip can drive full 1080p 3D graphics. TouchArchade says that the next update to Firemint’s Real Racing 2 HD will enable full 1080p video output in 30 frames per second. That’s without upscaling.

Samsung must be breaking out the champagne right about now, since its App Store has passed 100 million downloads of mobile and TV applications. That didn’t take long. Samsung’s App Store was opened in June 2010 and now has a total of 13,000+ apps for users to download onto their Samsung mobile phones and TV’s. And users have been doing just that.

Users in France downloaded the most, followed by Germany and Spain. Those three countries account for 40 percent of the total downloads recorded. Europeans obviously love what Samsung is offering. Sure those are not Apple numbers, but we are talking Samsung not Apple.

Good news for those in the UK, looking forward to the iPad 2. Apple has added the iPad 2 to its UK Apple store, as shown in photo below, with a convenient button that lets you “select an iPad”. Sadly it doesn’t seem like you can actually buy that selected iPad 2 just yet though, but it is expected to go on sale on Apple’s online store at 1AM in the morning tomorrow. Those in the UK can also buy one from Apple stores starting 5PM tomorrow on March 25th.

The iPad 2 for the UK starts at £399 for the 16GB WiFi model, £479 for the 32GB WiFi model and £559 for the 64GB model. The 3G and WiFi iPad 2 start at £499 for the 16GB model, £579 for the 32GB model and £659 fpr the 64GB WiFi and 3G model.

It had been thought that the iPod Classic would be discontinued. It was introduced nearly ten years ago after all. Last September Apple introduced new iPod models for every line except the iPod classic, so people just assumed it was going to be ditched. The iPod classic is still available, but has not been updated since September of 2009, again fueling speculation.

Well, when you want answers it is best to go straight to the source. So someone emailed Apple CEO Steve Jobs back in September after the device failed to receive an update. Steve responded, telling them that the company has “no plans” to discontinue the iPod classic. You can all rest easy now.

Last year, the European Union ordered cell phone manufacturers to standardize their syncing and charging solutions: all phones should use microUSB to transfer data and charge. And let’s face it, to have things any other way is just annoying. The only problem is that the European Union failed to stand tough and at the last minute agreed to allow cell phone makers to comply with the law by shipping their phones with microUSB adapters. That’s crazy.

We can only hope that things go better here in the states, because Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has confirmed that by January 2012, all US phones will use microUSB chargers, which would do us the great favor of making all chargers and syncing cables cross-compatible. Why he thinks this, we have no idea.

Buffalo has announced some new hard drives, the Buffalo MiniStation Pocket Hard Drive and DriveStation, a desktop hard drive storage solution that also supports Apple Time machine. The pocket sized Buffalo MiniStation will play nice with both PC and Mac and is available in 320GB or 500GB capacities. It appears to be USB 3.0 ready and can be powered by USB, without an extra power supply.

The larger desktop DriveStation comes with either a USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 port and is available in either 1TB, 2TB or 3TB storage capacities. It also comes with Buffalo’s backup utility for automatic backups. It can be setup to support Apple’s Time Machine using a USB connection as well.

Everybody wants an iPad 2. You know who doesn’t have one yet? Lots of folks in other countries. But on Friday, March 25th, Apple will start selling its latest tablet in 25 other nations.

After all, you wouldn’t just want to sell your tablet in the US would you? No way. You want it to sell around the globe. Those in Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea will have to wait until April. Sorry guys. Virtually everyone else will have it on Friday.

Canadian Best Buy stores will not be missing out on selling the iPad 2. In fact they will start selling them on March 25th, according to one store worker who quoted a manager on the matter. You can apparently expect them to be available at 10am friday when stores open on a first come first served basis and obviously you can expect long lines.

It might be more difficult to get an iPad 2 in Canada at launch though, due to the small number of Apple Stores around cities like Montreal and Toronto. There’s also the fact that Apple has also traditionally made the US a priority, diverting the bulk of inventory to the US. Despite these things, hopefully most Canadians who want one can get one without too much trouble at launch.

Behold, the iPad2 Gold History edition. Asin, your money is history. It was as usual, designed and crafted by Stuart Hughes in Liverpool UK. It is encrusted with 16.5 cts of ‘I’F’ flawless diamonds, 53 individually set sparkling gems, a solid 24ct Apple logo and the rear section produced again in 24ct gold.

It weighs 2,000 grams and the front frame of this iPad is made from one of the oldest rocks in the world, the Ammolite, sourced from Canada and dating over 75 million years old. That’s not all, sections of a 65 million year old T-Rex dinosaur’s thigh bone has been splintered and then shaved into the Ammolite and finished off with a single cut 8.5ct flawless diamond inlaid in platinum and surrounded by 12 outer flawless diamonds.

Who doesn’t love a game of pinball? Sadly those quarters add up and it can get expensive. Plus Pinball machines take up a lot of space. That’s why we play virtual pinball games on our phones and computer, but this doesn’t equal the same kind of fun.

Pinball Magic won’t give you the same experience as a full-sized pinball machine, but it will give you the experience of playing pinball on a machine designed for tiny people. It will work with a free pinball app that’s available from the Apple App Store, and it works with all iPhone and iPod Touch models that use iOS 3.0 or higher. Just $64.

Here is a great way to turn your iPad into a retro music player. Stereolizer is a new iPad app that allows you to give your iPad some 1980′s style and it provides some handy features too. The Stereolizer iPad app includes access to more than 10,000 streaming web radio stations and lets you arrange your favorite stations into 3 presets of 10 radios each.

While listening to the radio, you can record audio to virtual tapes direct from the radio or audio messages via the built in mic. Just like a retro stereo. After you’ve recorded a collection you can then eject the virtual tape to view and classify, remove or rename them using the iPad keyboard. Pretty cool.

Angry birds are all the rage. The new Angry Birds Rio game was announced back in January. The game is based on the new animated film RIO and Rovio mobile has just announced that the Android version will be available exclusively through Amazon’s App store.

The Angry Birds Rio game is a collaboration between 20th Century Fox and Rovio Mobile. It will be available for Google Android and there will also be a version available for Apple’s ios devices. Google Android devices will have two versions of the game available, a free version which is supported by advertisements and a paid version which wont come with any advertisements.

If a gadget is new, the folks at iFixit will tear it down. It’s as certain as death and taxes. Now it’s time for the iPad 2′s turn. Apple’s latest iOS device was laid out and surgery commenced. The tear down helped them discover that the tablet carries a slightly larger battery than the previous model.

They also learned that the hard to remove front display panel was tricky, but aside from that, the device was pretty easy to take apart. If you need to know how to take yours apart, you can head over to iFixit to find out how. Just make sure you can actually do it first, so you don’t kill the device.

In Central New York state, Anthony Carretero spotted the iPad 2 on store shelves already. One Walmart in the area had at least the 32GB and 64GB models in their display cabinets ahead of the 5PM Friday launch. Carretero didn’t try to buy the iPad though, but apparently one person who tried couldn’t get it to process in the checkout system.

This kind of thing is common in technology sales, whether due to inexperienced staff or any number of things, but it doesn’t often happen with Apple products. Anyway, for now you can look, but you can’t buy one until tomorrow.

According to Concord Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the white iPhone 4 is finally going into mass production this month. The goal is apparently to ship them in April, though the initial run will likely be restricted to GSM models and not include the CDMA version by Verizon. Right now we don’t know of any timeframe for a white CDMA phone.

Apple has promised white models since the iPhone 4′s launch way back in June of 2010. But Apple has had to delay several times and their most recent goal is for a “spring” release. And when the iPad 2 was announced last week, Steve Jobs emphasized that white tablets would be available at the same time as black ones.