PSP Pim gets touched by an iPod

iPod PIM?

While it is possible to surf on a PSP and to install new applications it is hard to find one with the older 1.5 firmware and surfing is a bit of a pain. Sony wants this to remain a portable games platform for young males so who am i to argue.

So i ordered an ipod touch from apple. When it arrived i plugged it into the Dual G5 and updated the firmware to 2.21 which was the latest version. I checked the settings to get the mac address and added it to the router.

The firmware update cost $9.95 at the app store, although i also downloaded the firmware file from the internet in case of problems.

Once this was updated i jailbroke the ipod which took a couple of tries but the instructions are very good. This installs cydia a nice GUI app front-end for the apt package manager. Sweet.

I fired it up and browsed the repositories and downloaded a pacman game and a VNC server so i could connect to my land line server. Went to the server no problem and also browsed the internet.

This is where i first encountered a serious problem - the typing keyboard is small and the letters are close together. I have small hands and it was still very error prone to type, so i got my son's stylus from his DS which helped a lot. This thing could really use a fold-up keyboard like the old palm had.

The interface is pretty good although i need to figure out how to hide the icons for apps i don't use like stocks and the screen is really bright - you could read a book by it. I don't like the quick setting for screen blanking, put the unit down for a minute and the screen blanks, but i can adjust.

The real problem so far is in figuring out how i will administer the unit - i don't like iTunes much it seems really inflexible and arbitary. For example, the dual G5 has thousands of songs that i do not want to automatically sync with the itouch, they won't fit! So how do i copy some? This was not intuitive at all and nether was copying some photos.

In fact, what i would like to do is what i did with the previous ipod, which is hook it to linux and use a 3rd party application to manage files between a desktop and the device. Only problem was when i hooked it to a ubuntu 8 box it got mounted to the desktop as a camera and not a drive.

I think the solution probably involves a 3rd party app.