PSP Tips and Tricks

Useful sites and hints to maximize the potential of the PSP. It can and should do everything the iPhone does.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Munseys.com for dime store ebooks


Munseys.com is a great source for quick and easy reading, especially if you're not up to tackling a Tolstoy novel at Gutenberg.com.

Munseys has over 20,000 dime store paperbacks and pulp fiction ebooks for free covering every genre imaginable. Many of the books are from lesser known or even forgotten authors who never cracked the big time, but I found Philip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut and Jack London within a minute or two.

On my PSP, I adjust the display settings to 'just fit" and download the html version of the books. You won't get full screen display because of the frames, but you can navigate well enough to read.

A great source of free ebooks.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Reading Project Gutenberg books from a PSP

Most discussion of using the PSP as an ebook reader centers around programs which convert text into jpeg images which can then be read using the /Pictures function.

Here is another way to access a large library of content without buying an iPhone or a Kindle.

A large number of Project Gutenberg texts are in html format and small enough to download to the PSP in their entirety. Books can be accessed directly from the Project Gutenberg site by using the search feature, to locate a book or author, and then scrolling down to see the available formats. Unzipped Html files under a megabyte should load without a problem. Larger files will need to be broken up into smaller segments using a computer.

Also, I've found that the search function at the University of Pennsylvania is easier to navigate than Gutenberg's, while still taking you to the same files.

Download Youtube Videos Directly From PSP

The biggest drawback the PSP has, in MHO, is the inability to stream video. To make things even worse, you cannot even download videos direct from Youtube or Google.

Recently I located a site which allows a person using a PSP to download youtube and google videos direct to the PSP. No conversion required.

PSPube will search youtube and google for videos, and then direct you to download links. Lower quality 3GP videos are available, after renaming the extension to MP4, as well as the higher quality MP4 videos.

This means being able to download and watch Youtube videos at the coffee shop or airport, just like (almost) those iPhone users.