Sony has released their new portable gaming system, the PSP GO. At first glance it looked really cool and sleek. I thought it would be
something that i could carry in my pocket to replay my bulky psp (I
have the original psp). The PSP GO is a great deal smaller and the
screen looks crisper than mine. I generally hold off before buying the
latest and greatest so i can play one of my friends. I was lucky
enough to have a friend that bought one on lunch day and wanted to
come to my house to gloat.

He opens the box and reveals the shiny new PSP GO. I was a little
jealous because I did want one at the time, but the fact that you
could not play your old PSP games on it held me back. He turned on the
system and got the low battery message. No problem, just plug it up,
but their was a problem. The charger is in 3 pieces. When you have to
look at the manual just to find out how to plug up your system,
something is wrong. During this process, I noticed the mini usb plug
has been replaced with a proprietary plug.

He has it charging and wants to play a game so he tried to download
one. He buys the game as we both are trying to look at the screen to
see what it looks like. The download screen appears and it says
estimated time 42 min. WHAT?!?! 42 min before he can play the game? I
have a g network with a very fast cable connection. I can download a
8.3 gig linux ISO in under 42 min. Also, come to find out the game was
the same price as if he bought it at any retail store, so Sony just
made more money off him. They didn’t have to package, ship or pay the
store their cut. They just got all the profits from the game.
As he is downloading the game, we discover another annoyance of the
system. You can’t do anything else while it is downloading the
game. You can’t look at the calendar, play a game, watch a movie, or
listen to music. If you are trying to back out of the menu, it cancels the
download. The download process took about 50 min to complete. I tell my
friend that I could of made it to the store,
bought the game, made it back, and been playing for 30 min while he
waits on it to download.

At this point, he doesn’t feel so smug anymore, he is starting to
realize that he traded in his PSP for another PSP GO that has less
capability. He had one shining hope, he said and I quote “Well at
least I don’t have to leave my house to buy the games.” I told him he
was wrong and I didn’t have to either. He then proceeded to give me
one of his PSP GO game cards, saying if you can play it on your PSP
you can have it. I say thanks, update my firmware, and download the
game. An hour later I have a freshly downloaded God of War game
playing on my PSP. At this point, my friend packs everything up and
takes it back the store saying it will not keep a connection to any
wireless network. Not sure how, but that worked and they took it back.
He now has a PSP 3000 and is enjoying it.

Lastly, a few other things I found out while my friend had his PSP GO
was that no accessory from the PSP will work with the PSP GO. The
battery can not be replaced which is a major annoyance to me. I like
to go a lot of places that I don’t have access to a power outlet, so I
have backup batteries for most of my devices. Also if you are someone
who likes to trade in your games or buy used games then you are out of
luck with the PSP GO. You can only buy things directly from the PSN
and they can’t be traded. Another annoyance is that it says its a 16 gig
system, but when you look at the free space on the system, it only says
14 gigs. The biggest annoyance is that every game that is released for
download is also going to be released on UMD so their is no reason to
buy it off the PSN.

I know the majority of these are petty but there are so many minor
issues with the system, that they add up to a very crappy piece of
hardware. If they had a way to transfer all your PSP UMD games to the
PSP GO, then I could over look all the issues. The fact that I would
still have to keep my origional PSP to play my old games just makes me
think why? Why do I need something that I have to start my game
collection over and not get any increase in graphics or functionality.
If you do not have a PSP and don’t care about after market games, then
it may be a good buy but if you have a PSP, don’t bother.

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If you’re a Twitter user like I am, you probably received an e-mail recently from Biz Stone. No, I don’t know Biz personally, although I’m sure he’s a great guy. After all, he basically invented Twitter. The purpose of his e-mail was just to tell me about the new terms of service that affect me and the 45 million (debatable statistic) other Twitter users, who tweet a combined total of three million times every day.

Biz’s e-mail opened innocuously enough—the kind of casual, just-in-case-you-were-interested tonality that characterizes the social networks’ business correspondence: “We’d like to let you know about our new Terms of Service. As Twitter has evolved, we’ve gained a better understanding of how folks use the service. As a result, we’ve updated the Terms and we’re notifying account holders.”

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It is a generally accepted aphorism that Palm Pre users are actually closet iPhone lovers. This maxim has been confirmed in a recent stunt by the WebOS Internals engineers. Described as a “homebrew patch,” the developers have created an onscreen keyboard, available at PreCentral.net, that can be used as an alternative to the Palm’s slide-out keyboard. The onscreen keyboard looks and acts suspiciously like the onscreen keyboard that came (seamlessly integrated) with my Apple device.

The major similarity between the Palm Pre’s onscreen keyboard and the iPhone’s onscreen keyboard is that they’re both onscreen keyboards. Both have a full querty layout, caps ability, and animation to visually clue you into the fact that you’re typing a certain letter. All similarity ends there.

Precentral’s Homebrew Apps page comes with an apropos disclaimer: “The apps you’ll find here are all beta and are for testing purposes only. They are all under development – use with care.” The WebOS statements goes a step further by stating: “While a number of people are having success with it, it makes DEEP changes in your Pre. You choose to use this entirely at your own risk. It may cause your pre to melt into a puddle and dissolve while turning blue. Use at your own risk!” While blue dissolving puddles haven’t been witnessed yet, crashing Palm Pres abound.

For starters, installing the app is a bit of a trick. Unless you have a software engineering background or are a tech junkie, we don’t recommend that you try to install it. Even Dieter Bohn admits, “it’s not…simple,” and delves into the Palm’s innards to launch a patch that opens the app and rearranges the graphical user interface in order to present you with…voila…the Palm Pre’s onscreen keyboard.

In addition to a penchant for crashing, the keyboard has difficulty with symbols, even on the widely publicized YouTube video. Unfortunately, you can’t have your keyboard and update your OS, too. First, you must uninstall the keyboard and then update the Web OS and then go back and reinstall the keyboard. If you try and update with the keyboard installed, experts say, you could “break stuff.” Hmm. Beyond the vague and chilling statement “break stuff,” the keyboard has a lot of other problems, too. It does not have auto-correct, lacks the ability to use backspace and return while in webview, contains positioning glitches, lacks a clipboard and shift-highlight, and a smattering of other ghastly errors.

But Palm Pre owners are gloating over the bug-ridden app. After all, the Palm Pre is one step closer to being like the iPhone.

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As many of you know, Apple or AT&T does not like Google Voice. Some say Apple didn’t want to approve the app while others say it is the fault
of AT&T. Granted, a Google Voice app would of been very good to have, but it is not necessary. You can access Google Voice on your iPhone
through their web app. In fact, Google has many web apps that I use on a regular basis. My favorites are Google Docs, Google Voice, and
Google Reader.

Google Docs
Most of you are probably already familiar with Google Docs, but for those who are not, it is an office like app that lets you create and
edit documents. If you are using the desktop version, you can email a document from your computer to someone else as a file attachment. I
still prefer using Open Office for major document edits, but Google Docs is great for quick notes or if you are on a computer that does
not have Open Office or MS Office on it. The mobile version of the site is here. It is great for
viewing documents on the road. I wouldn’t advise doing any major editing unless you are a huge fan of the iPhone keyboard. I have only
had 1 problem with the mobile version of Google Docs and that is I am unable to view some text document in it. I haven’t had any issue with
spreadsheets to my surprise, but text documents do seem to have some issues. It may be some sort of formatting that is in the document,
preventing it from displaying.

Google Voice
I am one of the lucky ones that has a Google Voice account and I love it. If you haven’t signed up for an invite yet, you can do so href="https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/">here. I primarily use mine for text messages, but my favorite feature is
call filtering. I have it setup so when someone calls me that is not in my contact list, they get a prompt asking for their name. Then it
calls my phone and tells me their name. From there, I can either accept the call, send it to voice mail, or block the call permanently. There
is a text version of Google Voice for the iPhone here. You can make calls, send
text message, and read your voice mail. Yes Google voice will take your voice mail and convert it to text so you can read them. The only
problem I have with Google voice is that it is hard to tell when you have a new text message. You have to manually go to the page to see if
you have one, but that is better than the price of some text messaging plans. I am hopping that the official Google App for the iPhone will
solve this if it ever gets approved. If you can’t wait for the official Google Voice app and you have a hacked iPhone, you can
download an unofficial version from Cydia called GV Mobile.

Google Reader
I have heard many people say they do not like Google Reader, but I am not one of them. For those who do not know Google Reader, it is an RSS
reader. It pulls the RSS feeds from your favorite sites so you can easily see when a site is updated. The mobile version for Google
Reader can be found here. I really enjoy using this on my iPhone because most sites are not
formatted for the iPhone, making them harder to read. With Google Reader, you can see what sites are updated and the first part of the
update without going to the site and having to load the entire page, saving you time and bandwidth.

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Ok, maybe like me you still discover that Windows finds a way to confuse you just when you thought you had cracked it! Yep, finally, you know what those programs running in the system tray are doing, and why those pop ups occur; you have even cracked how to optimize the performance of your machine. Then just as you think that you understand the processes – it happens again.

What’s that?!

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Company plans to begin sending out invitations to beta testers by the end of September

Google Wave – the ambitious, potentially ground-breaking new communications medium the company first announced earlier this spring – could be soon coming to a web browser near you. The company plans on sending out invitations on September 30 to users who previously expressed interest in testing the new service.

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