Ah winter, when a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of Christmakwanza. This holiday season, we hit up the entire staff of PopSci to see what they're dreaming of, what they're expecting, and what they'd recommend to you and yours. Come for the robot butlers, Teslas and aura-capturing cameras; stay for the eminently affordable headphones, DIY kits and more. Check it out here.

Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's backwards writing, this gadget plays with the idea of what the Renaissance Man's watch may have looked like, if watches existed back then. The numbers on the faceplate are not just written—and listed—backwards, but the hour and minute hands move counter-clockwise as well. For $US36, this watch simply tells time backwards, and will not, in fact, act as a time machine and take you back to the future.

Story from Gizmodo Australia

Tuitions may be rising, but the prices of digital tools and toys keep dropping. From ultralight laptops to Net-connected digicams, we pick innovative, feature-rich devices that won't impoverish you.

That’s projector, not protector. But geeks will rejoice nonetheless. The pocketsize projector has been the Holy Grail of gadgets for many years, and now we’ve got it. 3M sent us one of their first samples of their MPro110 mini projector a few weeks ago (but asked us to keep it on the down-low for a while). I immediately plugged it into a DVD player and watched Blackhawk Down on my desk—literally, on it, as I aimed it at my white Ikea desktop.

Thirty-five millimeter film is dead. Everyone over the age of nine now owns a three-megapixel digital camera with a 10X optical zoom. Parents upgrading to telescopic lenses are passing down their relics to kids who can’t aim and have never loaded a roll of film. In the digital revolution, the disposable camera was merely an innocent bystander (along with Polaroid). But at dive shops and drug stores, the single-use underwater film camera has survived as the practical option for honeymoon photography and pool party documentation. With the recent launch of the 5.0-megapixel Digital Underwater Camera Mask from Liquid Image ($99; a 3.1-megapixel version costs $79), the end is near. To see how potent the gadget could be, I spent an afternoon underwater attempting to document a most difficult subject matter: two kids under the age of seven.

See Ted Allen and your favorite Popular Science editors on "Food Detectives" every Tuesday night.

Dave Arnold would like to fix you a gin and tonic. Sound good? It will be. It will be very, very good. It will be like no gin and tonic you have ever seen or tasted in your life. It will also be considerably more involved, shall we say, than cracking open the Tanqueray and Schweppes.

Although high-def camcorders shoot incredible detail, they are a far cry from Hollywood gear. But the Red Scarlet, due out later this year, will capture five-megapixel video frames, picking up more than twice the detail of high-def camcorders and rivaling the eight-megapixel flicks that A-list directors are starting to shoot.

World of wires got you down? Clear the clutter with your very own fire-proof gadget charging station. Editor Mike Haney shows how a power drill and some tape can transform a bread box into a pint-size panic room just for chargers.

In each issue, PopSci rounds up the must-have products for the month. This June, check out dozens of the hottest new products: from the smallest pro camera to a eco-friendly mower to a frame that prints out its shots.