I’ve been using this game rental service for about a month now and I simply love it. Being Canadian I was not able to sign up for the GameFly service when it was launched, so I was pleasantly suprised when this service launched in Canada.
IOGC.net offers “2 out” game rentals in Canada, US and Australia! And costs $24.99CDN, $21.00US, $25.00AU respectively. But enough about the service and the pricing, lets chat about my experiences.
I have been a member of a couple of online DVD rental services before and have had experiences ranging from excellent, to downright crappy. The biggest thing with these services is how quickly you can receive replacement media when you return yours. I was surprised to see that IOGC.net includes a “Return this Game” button once you are logged in. What this means is that your return times are cut in half as you don’t have to wait for your returned games to arrive in their offices before the next set of games are sent out.
When you add games to your want list you can apply a ranking to them. The idea here is that games that are ranked higher will be sent out first if possible. This is another good feature, and one that isn’t available in all the services I’ve seen.
From my experience it looks like their stock of PSP games is quite high as well. I have had no problems receiving my top ranked games before any others (Ape escape, Lumines, Mercury, Metal Gear Ac!d) but with only 1 month of experience it will be hard to tell if this will keep up.
Finally if you like the game you are currently playing IOGC.net offers a “Buy it Now” option to buy the game at a small discount from what you would be paying in stores.
All in all I’m quite impressed with this service and have no problems in supporting and recommending it here! I have placed a banner on this page, if you click it to sign up and use the Coupon Code BANNER, you will get a free 2 week trial! If you are Canadian this service will be a godsend as no others like it currently exist here, and even if you are American you can sign up and try it out for 2 weeks to see how it compares with GameFly.
Well it appears that I neglected to post the link to the podcast RSS feed, so here it is! My current plans are to post a new podcast every wednesday. We’ll see how it goes from there.
I managed to pick myself up one of these bad boys last night. All that I can say about it is “This case is awesome”. I’ve looked at some of the other cases on the market, but none of them seem to do it right like Logitech did.
This case is a clear acrylic clamshell that your PSP sits in. There aren’t any clips to keep your PSP secure, which I first thought was a little weird, but after realizing that there would be no way to get the UMDs out if there were clips I got it.
The coolest feature of this case is the lid. Being a clamshell that lid is always attached to the bottom section of the case. Logitech has installed some sort of friction hinge so the top case stays open and doesn’t move. This is great for outside play or when you are playing in an area with a lot of direct light. The top case can be used as a form of sunshade to keep the glare off your screen. You can also fold the lid all the way back and form a sort of stand for your PSP which is great for when you are trying to watch movies and don’t want to hold your PSP.
All of the buttons and ports are open and available when your PSP is in this case, so there is no need to take your PSP out when you want to play some games.
I highly recommend this case for anyone that owns a PSP. This is simply the best case out there on the market.
PSP Podcast #2 is now ready and available for download.
In this issue I cover:
Game Mini-Reviews
- Ape Escape
- Lumines
Accessory Reviews
- Logitech Playgear Portable Case
Software Reviews
- MioMediaBox for PSP v1.0
As well as give some more info on this podcast and when it will be available. Look for text reviews of all the above items soon.
If you would like to give it a listen you can either download it directly [mp3 15min 7.5mb], or subscribe to the podcast RSS feed in your favorite aggregator. You can find the link to the podcast RSS feed in the sidebar. Enjoy!
Engadget is running a contest which pits the best PSP hack against the best Nintendo DS hack. Here are links to some of the more intriguing entries:
Engadget has collected a great series of links to PSP “hack” articles. Hack in this case is being used in its truest form, at least as it applies to technology. These are kludges to get the PSP to do something it was not intended to do. Not all of them are kludges though, some of them are quite clever and elegant solutions to complex problems.
There’s an interesting article I found that talks about potential future features of the Sony PSP. All of the suggestions have come from users of the device looking for ways to extend its usefulness. Check it out in full over at I4U News.
Looks like a few more companies will be releasing content in the PSP format in the near future. Here are a couple links of free and not so free content that will soon be available.
The first is 155 pages of downloadable manga from gomanga.com
The entire first chapters of the four flagship Seven Seas titles — Amazing Agent Luna, Blade for Barter, Last Hope and No Man’s Land — have been made available on Gomanga.com for manga fans to download and read via the Sony PSP’s built-in photo viewer. Each special preview consists of thirty to forty pages of story and gives readers on-the-go the perfect opportunity to sample the Seven Seas titles.
All visitors need do to access this free content is to visit Gomanga.com, download their choice of four zip files and simply follow the included instructions for transfering the manga to their PSP’s memory stick.
The second is from Playboy.com of all places:
from CNN:
We know that many Playboy fans are also gaming enthusiasts who are likely to buy this type of device, so it was a natural progression for us to design this,” said John. D. Thomas, editor of Playboy.com, in a statement.
Two non-nude galleries of 15 photos and a 2-3 minute video feature (both featuring 2005′s Cyber Girl of the Year Amy Sue Cooper) will be available free on Playboy.com. Only subscribers to the site’s “Cyber Club” will have access to the nude shots, which will also be available in two nude galleries and one video.
It’s great to see content being released for the PSP so soon after it’s launch. This will only mean good things for the future of the PSP.
The first PSP Podcast is now available. The PSP podcast is a weekly report on all the latest utilities, hardware, and games released for Sony’s PSP. More and more features will be added as the weeks go on, so stay tuned! This is just an introductory podcast as we are still gathering content to present, but give it a listen and subscribe to the podcast RSS feed so you will automatically get all the new issues.
You can either download it directly [mp3 3min 2.5mb], or subscribe to the podcast RSS feed in your favorite aggregator. You can find the link to the Podcast RSS feed in the sidebar. I prefer iPodder as my podcast aggregator to stay upto date with all my favorite podcasts.
I recieved a couple of emails last night from Lonnie, one of the staff here at PGRevolution. They contained links to some great PSP articles which I hadn’t read before. The neat thing about these particular articles is that they were from mainstream media sites and focused on other aspects of the PSP then it’s game playing ability. Since we are trying to cover all aspects of the PSP I decided to include them below. It’s great to see other sites talking about the more then just the games PSP shipped with, this is the kind of attention Sony needs to gain support from the masses. The media seems to “get” what Sony was trying to do with the PSP. I thought it would take longer then this :)
The Motley Fool – Can PSP Win Over Movie Fans?
The Boston Globe – Viewing a movie on PSP is all about the action
The past weekend I got around to trying the newly updated PSPWare 2.0.1 to see if my past problems were gone.
The previous version that I was using was having difficulties transfering images to my PSP on my Mac Mini. Images either would not transfer or would not display properly due to corrupted image headers. This was the first thing that I tested with this new version and I found that I could finally put the 100 or so images from my trip on my PSP without any problems or errors.
The next thing I tested was the save and restore of various save games, which worked wonderfully. PSPWare has a seperate “Backup” tab where you can keep the last 10, 25, 50 or 100 versions of your save games just in case you would want to go back in time with a game. It of course also allows you to easily drag and drop a new save game in that you may of just downloaded from the net. This is a crutial feature of any PSP sych application, and PSPWare does it right.
I wasn’t able to give the video or audio syncing a proper test as I’m still running on the puny 32MB card that ships with the PSP. I did try synching a video and single mp3 and it worked as expected, but I would like to see how it handles full playlists coming from iTunes or full DVD or mpeg videos transfers before I can give it a thumbs up for Video or Audio uses. Once my new 1 gig card arrives I’ll be sure to post my thoughts.
I would reccomend this application to all Mac users as I have found it the most stable and easy to use PSP synching application out there so far.
[Since writing this article version 2.0.5 was released on the developer's website]
Download it: Nullriver’s PSPWare
I’ve been finding it quite cool to see more and more sites offering already PSP formatted videos for download. One of the big problems that I’ve experienced with getting the videos on my PSP has been audio synch problems with the various converters out there. Letting someone else do the dirsty work is nice for a change ;) Here are some links to check out for yourselves.
Atom Films – 3 short films for download.
PSPTrailers.net – The latest movie trailers, sized to fit on your PSP
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