Sony’s BDZ-S77 is a Blu-Ray optical recorder. Ya wat? OK, it records material onto 23 GB a side DVD sized discs, and incorporates a digital satellite tuner so you can record TV progs in high definition. Oh, and it costs a cool $3700.00 in Japan. No need to rush, sir! If the first link acts up, try this one. Warning: Much Japanese.

So now I know how all those teen pop vocals we hear on the radio are produced. Ladies n’gennlemen, the Antares Vocal Producer. Realtime pitch correction (auto-tune), microphone modelling, compressor, EQ, De-Esser…you name it, this puppie’s got it. Don’t believe me? Then listen to any of the samples at the bottom of the page, especially Example 2 – Female Vocal. Yoy!

The Recipe Calculator is a free online service which lets you add recipes and see their nutritional values automatically. I like the idea, but it’s really difficult to use and the mandatory sign in is a pain. Shame.

The Agile Lie Detector is a real time lie detector for Series 60 smartphones. It’s supposed to work by measuring the stress in the voice. Important note on the site which says it all really: ‘WARNING: This software is for entertainment purposes only.’ I’ve got a suspicion that this is based around the same kind of technology as Amir Lieberman’s Truster software. I wasn’t totally convinced about it when I first talked to him six years or so ago. But…

Electronics giant Philips has just announced deals with four big European Net providers – BT, T-Com, Telecom Italia and Belgacom – for them to provide broadband Internet services for a new range of Net aware electronic consumer products launching soon. ‘The first devices for the UK market in this new Philips range of broadband-enabled devices are set to be announced in October.’ Please not another Web fridge, eh?

Lucky the Dinosaur. An eight foot animatronic geeza wot walks around, and talks courtesy of two ‘handlers’ on the sidelines and a cart full of fancy electronics. ‘He can blow his nose, wink, smile, and look around.’

The GH-Dispy24 – a combination multi-card flash memory reader and CD/RW drive. Cool for transferring your digital photos onto CD while you’re out and about. Priced at around $273.00 in Japan. [Warning: Japanese site.]

This report claims that many CD-R discs become unreadable after only some 20 months because of media degradation. Hmm…strange because I’ve got quite a few discs which are over 2 years old which are fine. And I don’t think that I’m the only one. They’re not brand name discs either, but just plain old vanilla cheapos. Pinch of salt. Hype with a. Take this.

‘Toyota plans to release a car next month in Japan that parallel parks itself.’ A self parking Prius? Now I know we’re in the 21st century.

iSpeak It is a cool application for your iPod which takes any document or Web page and converts it into an MP3 text to speech audio file in iTunes, so you can listen to it as you go on your iPod. Download your news feeds early in the morning and listen to them as you travel up in the train. You can find more cool iPod stuff here. Like the very cool book2pod e-book proglet which formats large documents so…

This is the Hubble telescope’s top pic of the planet Mars as it did its close quarters fly-by yesterday. Duck!

Cheese.com – The #1 resource for cheese. ‘There are currently 652 cheeses in our database.’ But guys, to be truly obsessive it needs photos, no?

…or how to get a new paint job on your airplane courtesy of Mother Nature.

The HookedonFacts.com site – billed as the world’s first ‘dedicated fact engine’ – offers up a constant stream of trivia to keep you amused at the press of a button. * The most phone calls are made on Mother’s Day. The most collect calls are made on Father’s Day.* Tug of War was an Olympic event between 1900 and 1920. Funkadelic!

Casio has announced a new batch of digital cameras. The EX-Z4 is a 4 megapixel version of the zoom camera whilst the EX-S20 & EX-M20 models are upgraded standard Exilim models. I say upgraded, but actually they’re rather a hybrid. Still at 2 megapixel, but with 60 second video recording. The EX-S3 that I have sports a 3 megapixel CCD but offers only 30 seconds of video. The new cameras also provide 85% more battery life, a scratch resistant LCD…