Author: kevin

The long awaited (and delayed) release of the 2.0 update for the PSP was released last night around 9pm PST, for Network Update directly on PSPs using a WiFi connection at first, and then some time later from the System Update page on the Sony PSP site.

I was watching the Update thread on the PSP forum last night and around 9pm people started posting that it was available for Network Update, but was not yet on Sony’s website. I had to reconfigure my WiFi hub to allow WEP encryption (instead of my usual WPA) so my PSP could connect, selected the Network Update feature and then it started downloading the 2.0 update straight away (took about 10 minutes). What an amazing feature – the PSP can download and update itself wirelessly over a WiFi connection – very cool. And the good news is WPA support was added in this update so I was able to enable it again after the update was installed.

Along with several usability changes and look and feel type enhancements, such as the ability to customize the color theme for the UI or use an image from your memory card as the background, the main addition is the Web Browser. Very cool. Sony definitely score full marks in UI design and have made good use of the limited controls on the PSP to allow the user to scroll around the page and select links. The text entry is somewhat limited using an on screen keyboard similar to character entry on a mobile phone, but it’s still very usable. The download of webpages is reasonably fast, and the update of the page and elements on the page is also reasonably fast.

So what next? I would’t say no to basic PDA type functionality (address book, calendar), as the PSP defintely has the horsepower to run a variety of other apps other than just games, but I’m not sure if there would be much demand for this type of app. How about multiplayer games across the internet via a WiFi connection?

Google’s new ‘Google Desktop 2.0’ download is the next version of their impressive Desktop Search technology, including several other add-ons.

New features include:

• a user configurable ‘Sidebar’ that gives you a personalizable portal: news headlines, weather, stocks, photos, quick links, and a desktop ‘scratch pad’ for keeping notes
• search for applications – useful if you know there’s an app on your machine somewhere but can’t remember where you put it – search for it and launch it
• developer add-on support for writing add-on apps for the Sidebar

So Sony annouced the 2.0 update to be available in the US on August 12th. This came and went and became ‘the week of August 15th’, which has also come and gone. Postings on the SCEA Playstion website from people who have called Sony are now saying ‘sometime between Monday to Friday.’

Intel have announced a dual core Pentium CPU to compete with AMD’s Opteron and Athlon64 dual core chips, but have admitted it is a ‘hack’.

From a marketing perspective this seems like a dangerous thing to admit – I don’t think too many people are going to be interested on spending the big bucks on a new CPU that is basically just ‘a hack’ – apparently this new CPU is more like two Pentiums bolted together. I wonder how hot that will get?