Chapter 11. Surfing the Web with Your PSP

Did you know that there are 2,598,960 possible combinations of cards in a standard five-card poker hand? Or that the 47-mile-wide Strait of Otranto is all that separates Italy from Albania? Do you realize that the fat guy on "Cheers" (not Normthe other fat guy) was named Paul? Or that Rutger Hauer actually improvised the "tears in the rain" part of Roy Batty's soliloquy at the end of Blade Runner?

The World Wide Web has more information, useless and otherwise, stuffed within its bounds than any human being could possibly fathom. How much of it is true is anyone's guess (my personal guess: about 46 percent). Some of it is useful. You can get weather forecasts, breaking news, and movie reviews by hundreds of critics, of course; other sites might help you out on "Jeopardy!", allowing you to discover, for example, that the Illinois College of Optometry is the oldest continually operating learning facility of its kind.

Everyone with a PSP armed with version 2.0-or-later firmware is armed for Internet travel. That firmware contained the first Web browser built into the PSP. Anywhere that has a Wi-Fi network to which you can gain access is a potential Internet access point, as long as you have your PSP in your hands.

It's only gotten better. With each new release of the firmware (currently at version 2.71 as my fingers tickle the keys), Sony introduces more features, such as RSS and Macromedia Flash support. Sooner or later, Microsoft is going to start swiping features from the PSP browser instead of Firefox!

It's true that with a resolution of 480x272, the screen on the PSP isn't exactly ideal for browsing every Web site; some sites require window sizes of 800x600 or larger and require a bit of scrolling about to get the best experience. The PSP browser, however, is ready for the challenge; it's designed with such limitations in mind, so surfing the Web with a mobile device doesn't get any better than it does with a PSP.

Now you can be anywhere when you learn that Møller scattering is the type of electron scattering indicative of the Quantum Field Theory. I have no idea what that means.