Sony Announces Skype For PSP, Homebrewers Respond

Croakyvoice writes "Sony has finally officially announced that Skype is coming soon to the PSP. The VoIP service is slated to hit the company's handheld at the end of January. The application will be available via a firmware update and is only compatible with PSP Slim & Lite Consoles. After the announcement the PSP homebrew scene released a new application called Furikup which will allow you to make phone calls with your PSP and is compatible with the original phat PSPs."

Comments

What's that?

[Jarjarthejedi]

Sony: An idea you say? Internet phone on a PSP? Why I do say old chap, that is a good idea! Let us put it in testing and quality assurance and then announce it's release a little before we put it out. Let us also make it available only on our latest devices, to encourage purchasing.

Hackers: Internet phone on a PSP? Good Idea! I'll have a quick-build later tonight, should be able to get this done in a couple of days...hey look, the original's compatible too! That'll save a few bucks...

PSP Microphone?

[NFN_NLN]

So where does one get a PSP microphone? Or is it built in?

Skype annoys the hell out of me

[drspliff]

Just like MSN, AIM, ICQ etc.. they all lock you and your friends into using the software. Skype is no different, it's not interoperable with anything else.

How many times have you reluctantly had to sign up for some proprietary messaging system, then got forced into using a advert laden badly made piece of software, or less than optimal alternative (hear that Microsoft MSN Messanger and Gaim?) when there are tried, tested and IMO superior alternatives.

Me? I use SIP and have a number of hardware & software phones that work with it at home and in the office... for messaging I use IRC and always have done.

If only Sony would adopt homebrew applications like Furikup instead of tying themselfs in with Skype or some other proprietary vendor.

Re:Skype annoys the hell out of me

[Quarters]

Skype is no different, it's not interoperable with anything else.

Except the worldwide telephone network and most any/all cell carriers. If it has a phone number you can reach it via Skype.

This is cool

[chuckymonkey]

As I've told many people the PSP isn't really worth owning unless you load custom firmware and your own applications on it. The functionality is immense, for instance I can read books, stream video from my PC to my PSP, play homebrew games, backup my games to SD, rip my PS games and play them, SSH, and quite a bit more. I actually think that I would hate the device if I couldn't load custom software on it. Anyway, back to actually working.

Re:This is cool

[Echnin]

Since we're on the subject - could you direct new PSP owners such as myself to good sites discussing homebrew on the PSP? I tried Googling for a while, but didn't find very good sites on the subject. Got myself one of the new slim PSPs in Beijing last month, and they fixed me up with custom firmware and everything, but still not finding many good homebrew apps to use...

Re:This is cool

[Fallen Seraph]

I recommend: http://www.psp-hacks.com/ and http://pspupdates.qj.net/ for the most part, as well as their respective forums at: http://www.psp-hacks.com/forums/ and http://forums.qj.net/f-psp-development-hacks-and-homebrew-13.html/ Lots of cool stuff there and you can always ask for help or advice. Personally, I have Bookr, PSPSSH, PSPIRC, and IRSHELL on mine. All very useful tools imo

Re:This is cool

[Peter Bortas]

http://ps2dev.org/ is useful if you are at all interested in development. The PS2, PS3 and PSP open source devkits are developed and discussed there.

Re:This is cool

[Henry Pate]

I got old (fat) PSP for Christmas so I spent some time modding it out and here's what I've found.

4gb memory sticks can be found for $60 online and are a great investment.

You can use this program to backup your UMD disks and then compress them, put them on the memory stick, and tada.

iR Shell is awesome, it provides a the ability to control IR devices, nice skinnable shell, good file browser, lets you switch out of games (think alt-tab), play MP3s while you're playing a game and mute game music, toggle CPU speed, do adhoc wifi transfers between PSPs, take screenshots and much more, you can find a larger list of features (and the un-official forum) here.

PSP Vault has a very nice downloads section, tons of guides and very active forums.
Psp-homebrew has a great list of homebrew you can sort by firmware version. compatibility
QJ.net is another good resource.

PSP Radio lets you stream internet radio on your PSP.

There are NES, SNES, GB, GBC, GBA, Sega Genesis, Neo-Geo, N64, Atari 2600, C64 and probably others.

Wifisniffer is a great probably that does just what it says.

PSP Weather is another good one.

PSP HTTPD lets you use your psp as a webserver.

Portable VNC lets you control your PC with your PSP and there is software that will let you use your PSP as your gamepad for your PC.

PSP XTI is a TI-92 (Graphing calculator) emulator for the PSP. GPS is soon coming to the PSP (USA only), it will be available as a UMD but no release date or price has been set.

There are many others, just browse the file collections and forums.

If you have a PSP with the factory firmware and wish to downgrade it can be an annoying process, it depends on what version firmware you're running.
This forum post as has the information you need.

Used PSPs can be had for less than $100 in stores near me, including a 1gb pro-duo stick, I think I've squeezed $100 worth of features out of it.
Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes

SIP client for the PSP!

[Critical_]

Furikup is a beta quality SIP client for the PSP. It's always nice to see the increasing number of devices supporting SIP. Without the luxury of having a PSP to play with Furikup, but having another SIP device (Nokia E61) I can give some recommendations to new users Voice-over-IP (VoIP).

There are a number of free incoming number DID providers. A few examples:

SipNumber provides Iowa State numbers.
IPKall provides Washington State Numbers.
OrbTalk provides London geographic numbers.

Google's Recent acquisition of GrandCentral is a very tempting prospect even though it is not a true SIP provider. You can get a phone number in almost any locale with GrandCentral and forward the number to the above two US-based providers. You may almost register for a Gizmo account and forward directly to it through GrandCentral. Once the Gizmo SIP account is registered to your device it'll ring when called from a regular landline.

The problem with having this many accounts is finding a service which can aggregate your numbers in one place so you don't have dozens of SIP accounts to register in your device. Voxalot is a nice service but they charge $15/year. Another one is PBXES.org but I would stay away from them. They have a notorious reputation of locking accounts and demanding a 50 Euro ransom to regain access. My personal favorite is MySipSwitch. It's free, does SIP aggregation, and allows simple dial-plans to maximize cheap calling over SIP. It's also an open-source project and the developers directly answer questions from the community in the forums.

Coupling this with services like PhoneGnome, it's possible receive calls from all over the world with some very simple guides (link #1, link #2) out there. Go ahead and give it a try. A big congrats to the coders that are bringing SIP functionality to the PSP.

Re:Nintendo DS

[cbeley]

It exists. SvSIP allows to to send and receive calls with SIP on your Nintendo DS. You can download it at http://svsip.free.fr/spip.php?rubrique9. There are also a couple free places you can use with it to make free calls on your DS that you can find by looking at the accompanying gbadev forum thread at http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?t=14121.

It's pretty cool, though, the out-going quality is sort of bad (it could just be the free service I was using), while the incoming sound to your DS sound just fine.

So, take that PSP :-P