It turns out that Sony\’s next firmware update for the PSP has owners in quite a troth. They\’ve already unveiled a web browser, that\’s actually better than most PDA web browsers. Now there are rumors about surrounding the release of PIM (personal information management), email, note taking, drawing and other applications. Of course Sony hasn\’t released anything official yet, but they\’ve shown a great interest in expanding the feature set of the PSP.

# Sony Mail – email client (Confirmed)
# Sony Organizer – collection of PIM applications that handle calendar information at least
# Alarm Clock – multi-alarm clock
# Writepad – note taking application
# Sony Paint – drawing program presumably using the analog stick (Confirmed)
# Sony Music Store – connection to the Sony music store for downloading and storing music on Memory Stick media (Confirmed)
# PS3 HD – supposed connection to the Sony PS3 hard drive[/color][/b] (though since the PS3 is yet to be released this feature is not a likely release at this time)
# Security – enhanced protection for the web browser and other internet connected applications
# Sony Eye Toy – Eye Toy Camera previously released for the PS2 ported onto PSP (Confirmed)

#PS1 Emulator – (Confirmed) Price of Games are minimum to $15 but not confirmed.

Although only some have been confirmed, there is much more to investigate from our leakers.

Here are some of the points of the new release:

1. eMenu– is meant to be a simple, fast, stable no bs alternative to the standard eLoader menu.
2. This is intended for use with eLoader v0.95+
3. This is not an \’offical\’ release, it is only a public beta, meant for people to try out and give us some feedback. Don\’t download this file unless you know how to use a custom menu with the eLoader. If you don\’t, please wait for the proper release.
4. No support is offered on this menu yet. If you don\’t know what to do with this file, don\’t download it. We don\’t want you to ruin your eLoader setup.
5. Although Ditlew has done most of the work on this so far, it\’s still a joint project, and will be released as a part of the eLoader package at some point in the future.

Download: http://www.pspbrew.com/?page=downloads&cid=&t=fileInfo&d=1142

UMDTool allows you to launch UMD\’s on your PSP using various settings. You can launch 2.0+ UMd using MPH Game Loader, RunUMD, or run a UMD at 333Mhz, but this has been Unconfirmed. This is what SodR had said about this apps:

"My original idea was just to create a simple program that could launch MPHGL and RunUMD at 333MHz without any extra trouble.
Then I just added a few extra functions and here we are. These days you don\’t know what program does what, or if you even can boot your new UMD on your 1.0/1.5 psp so I hope this program will make it a little easier to figure that out."

Here\’s a list of features and requirements:

•Launch the UMD
•Launch the UMD @ 333MHz
•Launch the UMD with 2.0+ support (Same method as Flashmod, requires dump of the 2.0 flash in the Memory stick root)      
•Launch MPHGL @ 333MHz (Requires MPH Game Launcher) 
•Launch RunUMD @333MHz (Requires Run UMD)

The 333Mhz support has not been confirmed yet, because the UMD changing the speed back to 222Mhz when the UMD is run. This application only works on PSP version 1.00 and 1.50, but provides a very nice interface for you to launch your UMD\’s from.

Download: [UMDTool v0.1]

A new version of this program was recently released, which writes to your Flash memory and has features to chage the PSP\’s system firmware. This should only be used by people that know what they are doing and how to use it..

Some updates added in this version are:

The guys over at Project PSP have posted up a new application that runs a few of those 2.6 firmware UMDs without having to update your psp, which seems to be a modified version of Run UMD! According to their tutorial of the Genesis UMD Launcher 2.6 the games they now have running are:

• UMD FIFA STREET 2 EURO
• UMD KEY OF HEAVEN EURO
• UMD DEATH JR EURO
• UMD GENERATION OF CHAOS USA

The other game that they tested, but is not working is the Euro version of Splinter Cell Essentials. This looks to be a great start in being able to keep your 1.50 PSP even longer without having to update for some of the newer UMD games.

Download:[UMD Launcher 2.6]

when shifting through the daily sand dune of emails, a nice gem gleamed in the rough. We have received these images of the upcoming PSone emulator for the PSP, created by none other than Sony themselves. The emulator will allow users to download games onto their PSP\’s memory stick and run them via the "Game" menu on the PSP.

For example, Gran Turismo 2 will support both ad-hoc (2 players) and infrastructure modes (2-6 players.) The cost on the (I will again iterate convincing) image will be at $15, which although pricey, is much cheaper than current PSP UMD games, and brings us the youthful joy at a reasonable price. But you don\’t have to take my word for it, I\’ll let you read the news tip as well and decide for yourself, because we can never be too sure:

Thanks for the newstip Al!

Ok, $15 is expensive, but it\’s better to pay $15 for a game with probably no loading times and better playability than most of today\’s UMDs.

"We\’re proud to release the latest version of eLoader, known as "Bock". The major new feature is, wait for it… automatic WiFi support for homebrew on all firmwares! That means that the wifi hack is now officially a thing of the past, and everyone can look forward to seamless networked homebrew, both infrastructure and ad-hoc.

Massive thanks for the trick to enable wifi support has to go to Chris Swindle, who discovered it while working on the networking for the latest release of the Quake homebrew, which we\’ve tested extensively to get working with the eLoader. For those who are wondering, this does not mean that we now have more access to kernel-mode – Chris found a function that allows you to load and initialise the networking libraries from within user-mode.

The other minor feature is that the default menu now caches the list of homebrew on your memory stick, so if it\’s less than an hour since the menu last scanned, then it will just load the cached data instead, making it much faster to load the menu if you have a lot of homebrew.

If you want to try out the new wifi support, then the following apps should all work fine:

• Quake
• Pang 0.3
• LUA Player 0.16
• PSPRadio 0.38 beta 7 (although some people have had problems on v2.6)
• … and probably more!

You can download this release in the usual two flavours: Auto-Installer for Windows, or ZIP file for other platforms. Please also look at the README file, it has lots of useful information"

The folks at Engadget just posted up an interesting bit on some updated Revoultion specs. If these are true, it essentially means that the Revoultion will be no more powerful than the original Xbox. Personally, unless this thing costs only $100, \’ll prolly end up sticking with my highly hackable Microsoft and Sony products. You can disscuss this topic on the forums at this link and read the original article below.

"Just like the Windows Vista release date, the rumored specs for the Nintendo Revolution continue to both change and disappoint us. IGN has posted some new info from sources in the game development industry who supposedly possess official Nintendo documentation and claim to have run benchmarks on the IBM-supplied Broadway CPU and ATI\’s Hollywood GPU in dev kits that are similar in design to final production units. Originally we had heard that Revolution would sport a 1.8GHz processor, and possibly as high as 2.5GHz — the new figure, according to IGN\’s sources, is a rather pokey 729MHz — compared to 485MHz on the GameCube, 733MHz for the original Xbox, three 3.2GHz cores on the 360, and the deified Cell processor in the PS3 (although direct comparisons are unfair due to the different architectures). Meanwhile, the supposed 600MHz ATI chip is now speced at only 243MHz (with 3MB of texture memory), which is a decent bump over the \’Cube\’s 162MHz GPU, and in the same league as Xbox 1\’s 233MHz. Total RAM is also rather disappointing — only 88MB — but all of these numbers, even if true, are totally in line with what the company has been saying all along: rather than fighting a next-gen console war, they want to provide a unique gaming experience based around an innovative controller in a wallet-friendly package."

Check it out, Amazon.com has the new SanDisk 4 GB cards for only $133 with free shipping! Great offer, and buy one while you can! This is a great deal, and SanDisk has been known to have great load times and the memory works great!

Link