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.

With The Beatles back-catalogue no closer to being digitally distributed online, Retro To Go have found this bizarre, officially sanctioned Beatles apple available in time for Christmas. The Beatles Stereo USB Apple will have the band's entire back catalogue in casing that will comfortable sit aside a packet of crisps in your lunchbox.

With a Fab-Four themed flash interface the 16GB stick will feature 14 digitally re-mastered albums, mini documentaries, album artwork and CD "visual elements" which will probably be something akin to expanded liner notes.

The tracks themselves will be getting a lossless FLAC 44.1Khz 24 bit format overhaul, and will also be on the USB in 320 kbps MP3.

There are only 30,000 of these limited edition USB Apples available, and at £200 they are sight more expensive than a Granny Smith.

Check The Beatles website for more information.

Firebox are selling a Night Vision Digital Video Camera for just £69.95.

Shaped a bit like a pistol, the camera lets you capture still photos and video footage in pitch-black darkness. Though it can only record two minutes of footage on its tiny 32meg onboard memory, an SD upgrade slot allows for expansion up to 2GB, which translates as approximately 75 minutes of footage.

It's unclear how much everyday use you'll get out of a night-vision camera. But it'll be great for gathering video evidence and slapping an ASBO on that fox that keeps tipping up Tech Digest's wheelie bin.

Grab the camera at http://www.firebox.com.

Scrub out whatever was at the top of your Christmas list, because whatever it was, it just wasn't as awesome as the Wall Of Sound iPodspeaker.

Weighing in at 102 kg and measuring up at roughly 4 x 3 foot, the Wall Of Sound is an absolute beast, with a 125 watt amp and frequency response of 40Hz - 20,000kHz.

It's mad enough to make even its namesake Phil Spector proud. And at roughly £2750, he's also one of the few who could afford it.

Here's the spec sheet:

• Dimensions: 950 x 1,250 x 300 mm
• Frequency Response: 40 Hz - 20,000 kHz
• Weight: 102 kg
• Max Amplifier Power: 125 watts
• Sensitivity: 95 decibels
• Nominal Impedence: 8 Ohms
• Crossover Frequencies: 1000 and 5500 Hz

Check out the Wall Of Sound website here.

We have all seen Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and how Mike Tevee gets teleported from one screen to another. Then of course our mates on the Enterprise, they knew a thing or two about teleporting.

So far though teleporting hasn't been a central plank of any consumer electronics company's visions - well not until know. Over at the Electrolux site you'll find details of the world's first teleport fridge.

Ok, so it is an entry in a competition, but Electrolux is certainly taking it seriously-ish. Ok so the advantages are pretty obvious. You don't have to waste hours in the supermarket/or online buying your food. And if you run out of milk you just press a couple of buttons and voila there is your semi-skimmed.

But teleporting? Well the fridge's designer, a Thai student called Dulyawat Wongnawa reckons 'In the next 90 years, we will see a lot of technologies that today we think are completely impossible. Even though my teleportation concept might sound far-fetched, scientists have already succeeded in teleporting small particles such as photons. So over the next 90 years, this technology will have time to develop and become part of our everyday lives.'

Hmm. Still it is well worth watching the video as Henrik Otto, senior VP of Global design at Electrolux, just about manages to explain the concept without cracking up. I bet it took a few takes.

Anyhow click on the Teleport Fridge below to see a range of other Electrolux innovations including the very sensible wall mounted dishwasher and the slightly more ambitious waterless washing machine.

It's Saint Patrick's Day, and although that probably has some great significance to many, in my experience it's mainly an annual excuse for people to drink heavily and wear green.

But that doesn't mean you have to forget about tech for the day - no siree! Before you go out to celebrate one of Ireland's patron saints, be prepared for anything with our top 10 drinking gadgets! We've scoured the web for the most inventive, unusual, fun and simply baffling devices to help the day go off with a bang.

So sit back, grab a brew and click the frosty pint below to begin the tour...

Alan Martin

Here's something I doubt you'll see at MWC and probably for a very good reason. There's not many people who enjoy dropping their phone on the floor ,so any footwear company would be hard pressed to sell the idea of walking on it for several miles a day.

However, a chap by the names of mikeyberman has put together a guide on Instructables of how to make the perfect device for getting your phone into places you shouldn't - places without metal detectors presumably.

This scares me a little. It's a little bag with a heating element in, which claims to cook your lunch when plugged in via USB. In reality though, 60C is barely warmer than a cup of tea - certainly not enough to kill any bacteria. Don't rely on it to grill a steak beyond "rare".

On the other hand, if all you're doing is heating up your cous-cous, then my objection isn't so pronounced. Who knows? Maybe in the hands of Heston Blumenthal it could be a force for good. Now there's a program I'd like to see - Heston Blumenthal's USB Lunchbox.

Thanko (via Oh! Gizmo)

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Yesterday, we had floppy disk posters, before Christmas we had floppy disk gift tags, today we've got floppy disk CD-Rs. Evidently the humble 3.5" floppy, subject of much mockery in the school playground, is now the coolest kid on the block.

Sure, they only hold 200MB of data (though that's 13789% more than the originals) and they're a little on the expensive side - at $10 (£7) a CD, but you can't put a price on retro-cool, right? Right? What do you mean "28p and a blackjack"?

Designboom (via Technabob)

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Adventurer and after-dinner speaker Neil Laughton's customised dune buggy can fly. So he's going to fly it - taking off from London this Wednesday, and landing/rolling up in Timbuktu approximately 42 days later.

The buggy comes with a detachable ParaWing (parachute/aerofoil thing) and has a fan on the back of it, allowing it to take off into the sky when it hits 45mph - and it can then cruise at 70mph at a possible and terrifying maximum altitude of 15,000 feet.

Neil's car can fly for 180 miles before needing to be refuelled, and there's a good chance that, should the mission be a success and nobody loses any of their eyes or legs, the Skycar will actually go on sale to suitably fearless and eccentric members of the public - at a price of around £50k.

(Via BBC)

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If you're young and still flexible enough to find the idea of (a) being outside in the cold and (b) hurtling down a hill really fast sitting on a piece of plastic enjoyable, here's the answer to your extreme sports prayers - a sled that works just as well on grass as on snow.

The Ice Meister SLICER is a grass-based sled that'll keep your bottom aching and your knuckles freshly grazed all year round, thanks to its removable sliders that users take out, freeze, then reattach for that year-round feeling of powerlessness and imminent death caused by going too fast down a hill with no safety equipment on and no members of St. John's Ambulance in attendance.

If your interest has been piqued, a PDF of precisely how the insane portable ice scheme works can be found here. The SLICER's for sale direct from the maker - but only for wannabe casualty ward visitors in the US and Canada right now.

(Via Dvice)

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Okay - I've seen some stupid inventions in my time, but this really takes the biscuit. It's a treadmill that - get this - moves along the road as you run on it. Like the treadmills-in-World of Warcraft video, but in real life. Your fake running gets translated to real movement. How's that for a waste of time, energy and the planet's precious natural resources?

(via Burbia)

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If I learnt anything from the second series of Heroes, it's that people who turn stuff into gold tend to end up in an early grave. A cautionary tale for Super Talent, who make USB drives out of 18 carat solid gold. The Pico-C USB drive. Oh, they cost US$599, by the way. What do you get for that cash? 8GB of storage, 30MB/s transfer speeds (gold's a very good conductor) and water resistance, in case you drop it in your $300 glass of champagne.

The company will also etch anything you like onto it for no extra cost, like a pretty zebra, your primary school nickname (big ears), or maybe even your company's logo. The whole thing arrives in a black velvet jewelery box with a certificate of authenticity and a gold keychain. I'll say again - US$599. That's £380. Yowch. Grab one on eBay and spraypaint it gold instead.

Super Talent (via ShinyShiny)

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In a straw poll I just conducted with a few former colleagues over Skype, I asked five people whether this product is cute or creepy. Turns out that four out of five rated it as "cute" - surprising, because I think it's one of the the scariest things I've ever seen. Place your vote in the comments.

It's a plush bunny toy, with a webcam in its nose. The webcam's not that great - 1.3 megapixel, and it captures in 640x480. Not awful, but not brilliant. Still, if you're buying a plush bunny webcam, then let's face it - you're not doing it for the specs.

There's a wide range of these webcams, from the cute (cow, penguin) through the obscure (supposed-to-be-a-mole) to the utterly trouser-browningly-terrifying ("Angel Baby").

Bunny-in-a-wittle-hat webcam

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