A new PSP homebrew developer in our forums, stevendlv, has just released Live 0.9 Beta, the dev's first homebrew release. Live is a "webcam/weather portal", much like PSP Earth but was not based on the latter's source code. As stevendlv put it, Live "is made of Div's and CSS while PSP Earth isn't for example".

This PlayStation Portable portal is connected to a number of locations worldwide. Here's the list from the dev's release thread:

• Finland: Helsinki, Tampere
• UK: Norwich, Manchester, Shetland Islands, Leeds, London
• Swiss: Geneve, Zurich Airport
• Holland: Den Helder, Schiphol, Eindhoven
• US: Nasa, Las Vegas, Massachusetts, California University, Golden Gate Bridge, Hawai. Sergo's Coffeeshop, Railcam
• Canada: Gordons, Vancouver
• Asia: Manilla, Hong Kong, Panda Cam, Shanghai
• Australia: Toorak, Perth, Perth

This release doesn't have a readme file as installation is easy. Copy the unrared file to the map PSP and then scurry on to your browser and type the file's address. That's it. Easy as pie, right? Check out the download below. Remember that this is still in beta, so for comments and suggestions you guys can go to the forums via the link below, or use the comments section.

Download: Live 0.9 Beta
Visit: PSP Development Forum

Gamers in Finland better start taking a good look at those age ratings a little more closely, as the Finnish government has tweaked their media classification system to make Pan-European Game Information ratings (PEGI) equivalent to actual laws.

The Finnish Parliament decided to move the power for rating games from their movie ratings group, the Finnish Board of Film Classification, to the PEGI. In a nutshell, Finnish law will now reference PEGI ratings almost exclusively with regard to their laws on video game regulation. This is some sobering news for those gamers who were hoping to grab an 18+ rated game, at least in Europe.

This also makes some changes to Finnish game ratings in general. Game Politics notes in their coverage that Finland's previously given age ratings of 11+ or 15+ will now be rated as 12 or 16, as per PEGI's standard. It doesn't seem so bad, given that's it's only a few months difference, but conscientious parents might just keep some games away from previously eligible gamers.

There is one bright side to this, however, as some games that are normally rated as Teen by America's Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) happen to have much lower ratings with PEGI. If you're in an area under PEGI jurisdiction, then you can find amusement in knowing that a game like Need for Speed: Carbon has a 3+ rating there compared to ESRB's Teen rating.

Mobile phone company giant Nokia just put an end to rumors circulating for some time now that they are re-entering the games market. What's the real deal? Nokia is indeed resurrecting the dead! And while their tag line remains "Connecting people," they are hell bent to disconnect Nintendo and Sony from their handheld fan base.

"There’s going to reach a point where we and other handheld platform owners are battling for the same partners and the same consumers," disclosed Nokia UK and Ireland Head of Games Martin O’Driscoll. The official then confirmed that established publishers and developers have already signed up to produce content for their new Nseries phones and S60 software.

If this is the case, it seems that the Finland-based company has learned from its previous mistakes. O'Driscoll continued, "We’re moving into a new competitive space, where we have a real attractive offering for the games consumer. These are no longer just casual games. They are real games played by real gamers."

Accordingly, Nokia conducted a previous survey about worldwide mobile gaming habits. The study also revealed that the community will play a vital role for mobile gaming's future developments. The new series of mobile phones will be released early next year. And as to how much these phones would cost, O'Driscoll unwittingly commented,

The consumer will have to make a decision: does he wants a standalone gaming device with a limited browsing capability or a phone with an MP3 player, a camera and a bloody good games platform? I think consumers will be prepared to spend £300 (US$ 586) on a phone that offers all those different things rather than £100 to £150 for a stand alone games machine.

 

World Rally Championship driver Colin McRae is no longer a stranger to gamers. A number of racing games named after him have come out already on multiple platforms. His newest exploit would be Colin McRae: DIRT, to appear this 2007 on both next gen consoles, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Unknown to all of us, he's about to zoom his way towards our PSPs!

Actually, there was a 2005 racing title that featured the said racing icon. Unfortunately though, it didn't quite pick up. This time around, developer Codemasters would like to make sure this new title is not going to eat other racing game's dirt. Some of the new features include:

• international real-life race routes like the ones in Japan, Germany, Britain, Sweden, the United States, Finland, Australia, Spain, Greece and other 9 countries
• 20 famous races and 300 tracks all in all
• new car models like Toyota Celica VVTLi, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VIII, Peugeot 206, Lancia Stratos and 30 other classic models

Also, we learned that there would be an experience mode wherein players will play as McRae himself earning credits and making better records. Most excitingly, the new game allows for multiplayers, supporting up to eight players in one time. Now, that will make things dirty! Anyway, an official title for the game has yet to be announced as it is currently deep into development.

    

TyRaNiD had earlier announced, with the release of PSPLINK 1.1, that he would be giving a seminar regarding PSP development at Assembly 2006 held in Helsinki, Finland. Basically, Assembly is a sort of a convention/lan-party/demo party held for programmers and hackers. They themselves describe it as "a computer festival, a demo party and a LAN party all rolled into one. It is four day party running 24h/day for computer hobbyists".

Now I don't know about you guys, but what they describe here is pretty much heaven for me. But as much as I was interested in it, there was no way I could go to Finland and attend it. Not much for the LAN party and everything, but just to attend TyRaNiD's seminar. Listening to him talk about PSP development would have been great, trust me.

Well, not much of a problem actually, because he was kind enough to upload the slides online. Now I skimmed through them and let me tell you, it was great. Here's a few screens I took from the article.

If you are a bit of a newbie to PSP programming, you might find the language a little intimidating, but seasoned programmers would find a wealth of info here. Then again, the seminar was directed to an audience who lives and breathes great programming, so I guess it must have been great for all those people present there.

Anyways, here's the link to Assembly's official site, in case anyone is interested. We've uploaded the slides to our servers, and I'd personally recommend all the programmers to have a look at them, they're really awesome!

Download Link: ["The Naked PSP" by TyRaNiD]

Developers would be very happy to know that there have been significant progress made on the v.1.1 release of their favorite application by TyRaNiD, the PSPLink. It is a very helpful tool for developers to make their homebrew on using C/C++. Since you can make updates on your eboots while the application is running, it will save you a lot of precious dev time. TyRaNiD warns that it is still a work in progress so each should treat it as such. So, far it only works for FW 1.0 and FW 1.5.

If you want to know more about PSPLink or on PSP development in general and in the proximity of Helsinki/Finland, you might want to drop by in the Assembly scheduled on August 3-6, 2006.

Changelog:

• Ability to reboot psplink into a different operating mode (i.e. game, vsh or updater) and have it persist.
• Ability to run usbhostfs_pc as a daemon, when in this mode the shell is lost but you can send commands to it by passing commands from pcterm prefixed with '@'
• Ability to use multiple PSPs on the same PC over USB by setting the product ID on the PSP and on usbhostfs_pc instance
• Added a new tool to dump kprintf output via the normal printf channels.
• Readded tab completion to pcterm, only tab completes local filenames and directories but can be useful if pcterm is running in the same directory as the mounted host.

Download: [PSPLink 1.1]