iPad this and 3DTV that! Who said Christmas had to be all about high-tech gadgetry?

Well, us probably! But that doesn't mean we don't have a soft spot for simpler times. So why not jump in the back of Tech Digest's Delorean and take a trip down memory lane, as we pick ten of our favourite retro (and retro inspired) gifts to pop on your Christmas wishlist.

When you're done here, be sure to check out the rest of Tech Digest's 2011 Christmas wishlists too.

Mrs Branson, Mrs Gates, Mrs Buffet; this Christmas Gift Guide is tailor-made for you. Christmas is just around the corner, your mega-rich spouse is expecting something extra-special, but he's already snagged that island, the custom built jet with swimming pool and solid gold golf set that you planned on getting him.

Just don't forget to slip a tenner (or ten thousand) in the post to us for all our hard work once you've browsed our suggestions.

When you're done here, be sure to check out the rest of Tech Digest's 2011 Christmas wishlists too.

Smell-o-Vision? Remember that? The idea that you could smell what you were watching on TV? Well the concept may be set for a comeback thanks to a small French company called Olf-Action.

They're getting ready to display at the Lisbon Design Show a nostril-bothering gadget called the SMELLIT, designed to replicate the smell of certain on-screen scenarios. Though little is known about SMELLIT beyond a few nifty design renders, the company have already had one roll of the pongy dice in cinemas, bringing "Odoravision" to a few screens to accompany a few films with retro-fitted smell tracks.

Does it work? We're not sure. Do we want it? We're even less sure of that. Still, if any eventual product looks half as good as the renders displayed below, it sure beats the old Noel's House Party smelly scratchcard trick that UK readers of a certain age are certain to remember anyway.

And, looking at the "scent list" Olf Action are touting, we'd be lying if we didn't say we aren't intrigued to find out what the "smell of the good mood" is.

Scroll down for a few shots of the SMELLIT:

What do you call a dinosaur's dog? Rex.

What do you call a blind dinosaur's dog? Doyouthinkhesaurus Rex.

Not that any of these dapper dino pooches are having any trouble spotting this season's key canine fashion trends. This year's labrador look is all about scales and tails, as dog owners deck their pets out in Cretaceous costumes.

From waif-raptor chic to plus-size Stegosaurus jackets, there's something for all breeds and sizes. There's even the odd mammal costume in their too for good measure.

Admittedly, there's only a tenuous tech link here (er...you can buy them online at www.partycity.com?). But what has been seen cannot be unseen, and I laughed so much when I saw this that I couldn't help myself but share them for some Friday fun.

Click below to see the dogs strut their stuff.

That late night trek down to the fridge for a midnight feast just got a web 2.0 update. Introducing the social networking inspired Fridgebook magnets from gadget gurus Thumbs Up.

Billed as an "analogue" alternative to a well known scocial network, it features dry-wipe status updates and a zero% chance of account hacking.

According to the chuckle-filled press release, the Fridgebook magnets' features include:

- Easy to use wipe-clean white board pen

- Compatible with most fridges

Yours to buy from mid-September for £19.99, click here for stockist information.

I have no interest whatsoever in the Royal Wedding. Fair play to the young regal lovers for tying the knot and bagging us all an extra couple of Bank Holiday days off, but the near-certain pomp and excess of Prince William and Kate Middleton's nuptials rubs me up the wrong way.

If Kate and William are looking for a geeky, techy J-Lo replacement as their wedding planner, I'm their man. To prove my credentials, read on to see how Tech Digest would organise the ultimate Geek Fantasy Tech Royal Wedding, were money no issue, cybernetic bodyguards watched our backs and supernatural eco-warriors with a penchant for plastic rings existed...

Carriage: Star Wars AT-AT

You've got the aging royals standing on the doorstep of Buckingham Palace, it's pouring rain and Prince Philip is moaning that his tails are getting wet. Time is of the essence, if the millions watching the vows on YouTube are to get timely live coverage. A horse drawn carriage simply wont do. Enter the All-Terrain Armoured-Transport, AKA the AT-AT from Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back. There will be enough room for the whole of Eton in the boot, while the Queen could even quickly take a detour past John Lydon of the Sex Pistols' house and blow it to smithereens with the head-mounted laser cannons.

Arrival: Westminster Abbey Foursquare check-in

Prince Charles climbs out of the AT-AT, pops his top hat over his ears (after several troubled attempts) and walks through the doors of Westminster Abbey. But not before checking-in to the place of worship using Foursqaure on his smartphone. Alas; no free coffee comes with today's check-in, so he quickly nips around the corner to one of about 30 Starbucks on the adjacent street and does the same thing there.

Home Video: Panasonic HDC-SDT750 3D camcorder

The whole ceremony may be being beamed live around the world to billions, but there's nothing like catching best man Prince Harry picking his nose with a cheekily zoomed home video camera. With Sky passing up the opportunity to cover the event in 3D, we'd love to see Prince Andrew rock up with a Panasonic HDC-SDT750 3D camcorder to film the day's festivities, though keeping Charlie's ears in frame might prove difficult.

Pageboy: R2-D2 astromech droid

If your pageboy isn't loveable, then he aint worth the ice-cream you're paying him in. If you want a reliable, iconic alternative with a motorised heart, R2-D2 is your droid. He's got more features than a sci-fi Swiss Army Knife, and will have your diamond wedding ring popping out of his spring-loaded head before you can say "Let the Wookie win".

Bodyguards: T-800 Terminator

With high profile guests from around the world, the Royal Wedding is potentially a target for trouble makers of all descriptions. If you've got people who need protecting, there's no better bodyguard than the T-800 model Terminator. I can see the touching scene at the end of the ceremony now as Her Royal Highness bawls into The Terminator's bullet-ridden leather jacket. His words of comfort? "I know now why you cry, but it is something I can never do". Beautiful.

Vicar: I-Fairy Robot

A vicar. That is a robot. $68,000 will secure the I-Fairy robot priest to rattle off your vows with its Speak-And-Spell voice. Noticing a pattern here? Well we never said that the tech wedding would ever stretch beyond a love of automated human replacements, but considering the stock smiles and well-trained poise the majority of the royal family seems to posses, you have to wonder which guests are the ones dreaming of electric sheep...

Kate's Dress: Enlightened LED Wedding Dress

Picture the scene; hundreds of TV vans are draining Westminster Abbey's power supply to broadcast the event to the world, when disaster strikes. A power-cut occurs just before Kate hits the aisle. Think a University of Edinburgh graduate like Kate wouldn't plan for something like this? Exactly; that's why she's wearing a wedding dress lined with 300 glowing LED lights from Enlightened. Touching and tacky at the same time.

The Rings: Captain Planet Elemental Rings

I-Fairy's done its part, the vows are exchanged, time to slip on those rings. But wait! What are those lights emanating from the newlyweds fingers! GASP! They aren't wedding rings, they're PLANETEER RINGS! Wills has Earth and Kate has Fire! Who'd have thought it? Up pops Captain Planet, cleaning up the ceremony's carbon footprint in an instant while his theme tune blasts over the PA. He's a hero, and he is going to take pollution down to zero, don't you know. GO PLANET!

After The Vows: Changing Your Facebook Relationship Status with a HTC Salsa or ChaCha

You've mopped up the tears, the crowd is cheering, the royal fanfare is trumpeting out around the globe. The next step on the path to marital bliss for Wills and Kate? Changing their Facebook statuses to "Married". A HTC Salsa or ChaCha, with their one-button-touch access to the social network, will have them broadcasting the change before they've even walked back down the aisle. Compared to the other ideas, this one almost seems sensible...

If there was a tech equivalent of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, it'd probably be the gadget and gizmo heaven that is Firebox.com .Tech Digest recently got to have a play around with all their latest and greatest gear, and made a pretty lengthy Chsitmas list in the process.

Santa, if you're reading, you know what to do.

Click below for the best of Firebox's Christmas collection.

Remember the uber-cool self-lacing trainers that featured in Back to the Future II? If you don't, firstly there's no way we're ever going to be friends. Secondly, hit the video below to check them out.

Remember now? Well today those trainers took one small step towards becoming a reality after news has spread that Nike have filed a patent with an aim towards possibly developing a pair. Lights, recharging batteries as well as the auto-tying could all feature should they ever be fully developed.

While one side of me would kill to have a pair of motorised auto-lacing Nike trainers, the other half of me would always be worried that they'd get wet in the rain and go into meltdown, lopping off my feet in the process. That would not be cool. The below clip of a custom job however is the very definition of cool.

For the record, considering Back to the Future II's 1989 release date and the movie's time-travelling now-near-future setting, figuring out whether to file this story under "Retro Gear" or "Future Gear" nearly caused me to have some sort of minor existential breakdown. That's what you get when you mess with the space/time continuum I suppose.

Via: Engadget

Birthday candles are a bit twee really, aren't they? Sure, when you're a kid their little dancing flames and blown wishes seem magical, but they sort of lose their appeal when you start chain-smoking 40 a day. By that point you need something a little more hardcore. Enter then the Lotus Flower musical candle, enthusiastically demonstrated in the video above, that will blow your face off before playing you a tinkling commiserative Happy Birthday for your troubles.

According to suppliers SourceSquare, the candle is "set off by lighting an incense stick and touching the pistil of the flower, upon which it will eject beautiful pyrotechnics, emblazing the candles automatically; meanwhile it sings a happy birthday melody; and the bud slowly unfolds, like a blooming lotus."

Blooming lotus? All I can imagine is a load of blooming blisters as you make your way to casualty with 3rd degree burns. Still, if you fancy yourself as a bit "Xtreme" then it's way cooler than those candles that can't be blown out I suppose.

Grab one from SourceSquare for $5.99.

If headaches and poorly tagged on depth effects aren't bad enough, 3D cinema showings also rely on those horrible glasses that make you look like a cross between Roy Orbision and Dame Edna Everage. Thankfully, you're in a room full of people who look equally stupid, with the lights down so low you can barely see each other.

Which therefore begs the question; why do we need new Aviator-styled premium 3D specs from Cineworld?

Sure, they look a bit trendier than the National Health look of the first wave of specs, and you can keep them and reuse them again and again.

But really, you have to be pretty insecure to worry about how you look for the odd two-and-a-half hour trip to catch a flick.

Still, if you are interested, the glasses will be on-sale from Cineworld cinemas for £13, with clip-ons costing £4.

Last week's Back to The Future hoax (in which evil internet fibbers said that we'd actually reached the date in the "future" that Marty McFly heads to) got me thinking. To be precise, it got me thinking "WHERE THE HELL IS MY MOTHER F***ING HOVERBOARD?"

You see, sci-fi cinema has a tendency to promise us the world, but none of the crazy ideas ever seem to come to fruition. Perfect example being flying cars; we've had them in comics and films for decades now, and you're telling me we can send people to the moon, but cant get a car to fly? Pshshhhh!

So here's my rundown on the best sci-fi gadgets that really do need to exist in the real world.

Admittedly, nearly all of the concepts and ideas in the films lead to some sort of disaster or other. But if the technology were in the hands of someone with the right intentions, someone who lacked hubris, who would use the gizmos for good and not personal gain, someone like... me...

Then...then...THEN I COULD TAKE OVER THE WORLD! MWHAHAHAH!

Hit the gallery below to see Tech Digest's Top 10 movie gadgets and gizmos that someone really should be making

Super Street Fighter IV is a great game, totally deserving of its legion of loyal fans for being the best brawler of this console generation. If you are one of the hardcore few who really, really, really can't get enough of Super Street Fighter IV unless you have the action figures, t-shirts and sexual supplement tie-ins, then here's another product to add to your beat-em up inspired wish-list; a Super Street Fighter IV-branded LED HD TV set.

Available in 32, 40, 42 and 46 inch models, these Street fighter TVs from Roundtable Concepts come with your favourite characters and the Street Fighter logo popped onto the lower bezel of the screen.

"We are extremely excited to be working with Roundtable Concepts, Inc. on this new initiative," said Seon King, Senior Director of licensing at Capcom.  "There is such a natural partnership between video games and consumer electronics - especially televisions and monitors - that a partnership like this was a perfect fit. We hope that our Street Fighter fans will enjoy their favourite fighting game on one of these HDTV's for the ultimate Street Fighter experience."

If you're mad enough to be considering buying one of these things, note this inexplicable addition to the design of the sets. Every time you fire up the TV, the Street Fighter logo will appear for 8 seconds. EIGHT WHOLE SECONDS, when you could be getting your game on with another set.

Based on a 5 year life span for the TV, with the set turned on a minimum of twice a day, that's roughly eight hours of your life lost to the Street Fighter logo. If that isn't a spinning bird-kick to the balls, then I don't know what is.

I personally cannot afford a regular iPad which, at £429 for the cheapest model in the UK, is noticeably more expensive here than in the US. However, if you're the super-rich show-off type, you can start salivating over this £130,000 gold-plated, diamond encrusted Apple tablet.

"For the most elite individual, we bring you the the worlds 1st solid gold and diamond iPad," writes designer Stuart Hughes.

"Encrusted with 25.5 cts of 'IF' Flawless diamonds, a magnificent total of 53 individually set sparkling gems dwell beautifully in the solid 22ct Apple logo. The rear and screen surround are made from a single piece of solid 22ct gold, weighing an immense 2,100 grams.

"This most luxurious iPad's appearance is outstanding even down to the precise polishing to reveal its most beautiful harmonious appearance. A magnificent combination of top of the industry technology and unrivalled craftsmanship was involved in creating this masterpiece. This item is of a limited edition of only 10 units to be made."

If you're rich enough to be interested, click here to have a look. And send a couple of quid to my Paypal account for the tip off, too. Go on, you can afford it.

The King of Pop Michael Jackson may have left this earthly realm, but that's not to say we can't have a string of baffling Jackson branded products to remember him by does it?

Take for instance this Samsung Michael Jackson branded 500GB external hard drive. I don't quite remember Jackson being a familiar face down in Silicon Valley, but I suppose even from beyond the grave you've got bills to pay. They really would slap his face on just about anything though, wouldn't they? Or in this case, his silhouette.

The hard drive, available from February 22nd, comes pre-loaded with the "This Is It" tour documentary, chronicling the last rehearsals before Jackson's untimely death.

Excuse the pun, but I can't help thinking this is a "Bad" idea.

That said, I bet this lot below have pre-ordered about 12 of the things.

It's that time of year again, where we all rush off to Clinton's for a naff card, a syrupy teddy and a box of Quality Streets for our loved ones. Yep, Valentine's Day rears its sickly head once again, and, like it or lump it, it's here to stay.

But how best to show the extent of your love for that special, nerdy man-child in your life?

If your boyfriend is partial to a bit of tech or some geeky toys, you've come to the right place. Check out Tech Digest's Top Ten Geeky Valentine Presents: For Him. Wedding bells will be ringing in a matter of months with these nifty little gifts, we assure you.

Click the image below to get started

Remember all those You've Been Framed clips of dogs playing the piano? Well that was just the beginning; thanks to Mattel's Puppy Tweets collar tag, your dog is about to enter the online world of social networking and Twitter. No, seriously.

First of all, you have to make a Twitter account for little Rex (stay with me here). You then clip the tag onto your dogs collar, which packs in both motion and sound sensing technology. The device then reads and categorises what your pet is up to, and sends it to the dog's Twitter account. Then you, smug dog owner person, sit back and marvel as the pooch tweets such dignified observations as "YAHOOOOOOOOO! Somedays you just gotta get your bark on" or "I finally caught that tail I've been chasing and...OOUUUCHH!"

This isn't exactly going to change the minds of those who still "don't get" Twitter yet. But can you think of an anymore zealous a group of animal lovers than dog owners? It'll sell like hotcakes, though I don't much fancy an army of Rovers following my feed.

And surely a "Budgie Tweets" collar would have been more appropriate? Hmmm...Excuse me while I just go file a patent...

Here's a novel new approach to camcorders. The Ion Twin Video features two cameras which record simultaneously in two back-to-back directions, producing a picture-in-picture recording.

It looks quite a lot like the Flip, hooking up to a PC via USB, recodrind to an SD card or SDHC and featuring a rechargeable battery pack.

I can't figure out if I like this one or not. On the one hand, being able to catch both jaw-dropping moments and your reactions to them simultaneously could have some fun outcomes; think You've Been Framed with added evil-grins. On the other hand, so far it seems that you cant dedicate the whole image to just one video feed and cut between the two lenses; you have to have a picture-in-picture set up, which could quickly become annoying and make the whole thing a bit useless really.

Might be one for narcissists only this.

Price still unknown, but expect to see the Twin Video in shops by the Summer.

Nearly everyone's got an iPhone these days, so it was only a matter of time before someone with more money than sense commissioned a luxury iPod like this to distinguish them from the great unwashed.

The iPhone 3GS Supreme has a 22-carat solid gold body, with 190 diamonds inset into its casing. Liverpudlian designer Start Hughes took ten months to come up with the design, which, lets face it, is just a bog-standard iPod dipped in gold. Finished off with a storage box carved from a single block of granite, a mere £1.92 million will make the phone yours.

A perfect stocking-filler then.

If you're dreading the drive up and down the country to visit the in-laws this Christmas, speed freaks on a budget may get a real kick out of the SoundRacer.

The SoundRacer plugs into your car's cigarette lighter and uses an FM transmitter to play V8 or V10 engine sounds out of your car speakers. In a clever touch, the SoundRacer syncs up to your RPM counter to accurately scale the top-speed sounds to the top end of the speed limit. Your 30mph Robin Reliant all of a sudden sounds like a Lewis Hamilton-bothering Ferrari!

We suspect that this little gadget could entice some boy-racers to get a bit reckless, so we wouldn't recommend letting this into the hands of anyone but those with the cleanest of driving records.

You can pick up a SoundRacer here.

You know what's wrong with all these new smartphones? They just look too sleek. What I really want is a gaudy, bling-tastic phone, unofficially themed around my favourite dead popstar. If you too are looking for something a little more, ahem, off the wall, then this Michael Jackson phone may be for you.

With faux diamonds and moon walking silhouettes of Jackson etched on the back, the gold coloured handset is a sight to behold. Made by a Chinese imitation "shanzai" company, the phone comes packaged with a suspect-looking live DVD.

The "limited edition" phone is extremely garish, but in terms of knocked off gear, you can't beat it.