Preface

At the end of the first week of North American sales of the PlayStation Portable (PSP), Sony reported that the PSP sold over 500,000 units in the first two days. In the span of this same week, the Internet was abuzz with all sorts of news about the newly released device: reviews, first impressions, how-to articles, and various different ideas for repurposing the device beyond the limited usage that Sony originally intended.

Sony has created a diversely powerful device with the PSP. Not only is the PlayStation Portable a portable game system born from the most popular console gaming system in the world, but it also has a variety of multimedia features, including video (either via UMD disks or MPEG4 video files), music, and digital images. Mix in the USB port, the Memory Stick Duo slot, the IR port, and the 802. 11b wireless capabilities of the device, and you have a Swiss Army knife gadget, ostensibly intended primarily for gaming by the manufacturer, and therefore practically taunting and begging the industrious gadgeteers among us to hack and repurpose it. Nothing speaks to this more than the numerous and varied hacks that emerged on the Internet in the time span of a mere week after the North American release of the device: "Read Web Comics on Your PSP" [Hack #28], "Use Your PSP as an E-Book Reader" [Hack #27], "Turn Your PSP into a PDA" [Hack #35], "Read RSS Feeds on Your PSP" [Hack #33]…the list goes on and on.