PSP, RSS & Web-browsing

2:06p.m., Sun 3 Sep 2006

My PSP died. I took it back. I got a new one and it had the latest firmware. Where previously there was only a web browser my PSP now had an RSS reader. "Blimey," I thought "that's cool." And the more I thought about it the more cool I thought it could be. Podcasting is powered by RSS format files, which might make the PSP the perfect tool for podcasting audio and video. *Might* is the operative word here, in practice it needs some kind of podcasting application to handle all that. Sony, i imagine, will be rolling out their own download service with their own DRM and their own bugs and infuriations (it's what Sony do). It was a lovely notion that I had a for a few moments though - I really enjoyed it. Maybe one day this will be a reality, but I doubt Sony are smart enough or can resist the temptation to fuck up something to graceful with a ham-fisted business plan. On the web-browsing front, I do use my PSP. But I only visit a handful of sites that I'm really familiar with. Otherwise it's a navigational nightmare. Coding a HTML site to work for such a small screen resolution AND to work for the huge resolutions routinely used my PCs.... makes my head hurt. In theory, using CSS max-width and min-width attributes it could work. In practice, support for these CSS attributes is patchy. However, having committed myself to semantic mark-up and accessibility good practice I feel that understanding non-standard devices such as the PSP is the next horizon to aim for.