it's funny, I was just watching a NOVA documentary about absolute zero, and laser cooling was a big part of it.
I'd never heard of the technology before, but now twice in one day it comes up!
Anyways, as I understand it it only works with on a single element, you have to pulse the laser at the exact resonant frequency of the element... I'm guessing it works through the doppler effect or something, where you pulse red light at it as the atom is coming toward you and it effectively slows the atom down, losing heat.
It wouldn't work on a large scale though, cooling everyday objects... it's a very precise science and it will only ever work on one element at a time. (though the guys in the documentary managed to cool something within 1/1000000th of a degree above absolute zero using it!)