Ruh roh. Those wildly flung patent infringement claims tossed out by Hillcrest Laboratories could have some merit, but even if not, it'll be the ITC making the call. The US International Trade Commission has given itself the green light to investigate the allegations made by the aforesaid company, which state that Nintendo infringed on four of its patents in order to make obscenely large quantities of cash with the hot-selling Wii. There's no telling how high (or low) this is in the agency's priority list, but we'll be keeping an ear to the ground for some sort of resolution, regardless.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/18/i...ringement-cla/ ...

via engadget

This is easily one of the more unorthodox hacks we've come across, and while we have all ideas only a few will even bother to give it a go, we couldn't help but share. Steve from PanoCamera decided that lugging around a laptop for precisely controlled shooting was just too much effort, so rather than throwing in the proverbial towel, he simply figured out a better way. By hacking the DS to play nice with his monstrous Canon, he was able to use the handheld to begin / stop shooting and tweak all manners of settings. For those interested in having one of their own, but completely uninterested in using their innate DIY skills to make it happen, drop ole Steve an e-mail.

http://panocamera.com/blog/?p=26 ...

News/release from Torch:

This is a simple plugin I made a long time ago for my personal use. I just found the source code while going through some old stuff on my computer, so I thought I'd clean up the code a bit and release the plugin.

I realize that there are other plugins that feature similar functionality but I wrote my own because I wanted to be sure its coded optimally, as there are a few careless ways in which these functions can be improperly used (the point of this after all is to conserve battery life).

It does the following when the Hold switch is enabled:
* Switches off the LCD backlight.
* Switches off the actual LCD screen.
(This is important because the backlight and actual screen are two different things. You can have an image being displayed on the screen while the backlight is switched off, such that you can see the image if you use a flashlight. You can also have the screen switched off while the backlight still illuminates the powered off screen.)
* Underclocks the CPU to 61MHz
(Sony has changed the clock speed functions such that only certain combinations of speeds work correctly. Simply trying to underclock to arbitrary values will result in the CPU simply running at the stock speed. I have verified that Hold+ successfully underclocks to 61MHz.)
* The original screen brightness and clock speed are restored when the Hold switch is released.
* Prevents the PSP from going into suspend mode if you accidently push the power switch too far when turning off Hold mode.
* Allows operation of the PSP with the display turned off, to change volume, skip songs etc.

Usage:
Turn on the Hold switch to automatically disable the display and underclock the CPU. Turn off the Hold switch to return the CPU to normal speed and enable the display.

If you push the ANALOG UP button when turning on the hold switch, it will only lock the keypad like normal Hold mode. The display and CPU speed will not be changed, so that you can watch videos etc. with the keypad locked.

If you push the ANALOG UP button when turning off the hold switch, the display will remain switched off and the CPU will remain underclocked, but you can operate the PSP. This is useful if you just need to adjust the volume, fast forward/rewind, or to skip to the next song, without unnecessarily turning on the display. To return to normal, push the power switch to the suspend position, or just press the Screen button.

Installation:
You can install it in the seplugins folder, and make an entry in VSH.txt. Thus it will be active in the XMB. Its also possible to use it in games by adding it to GAME.txt, but some games may crash etc., if the CPU is underclocked to such a low value.

Optionally, its also possible to install it in your PSP's flash0 so that it will work without a memory card. For this you can use FreePlay's "NewBTCFNedit" and enable it for VSH mode in the all the PSPBT?NF.bin files. Add it after vshmain.prx.

Advanced:
If you want to change the clock speed to your own values, you can use a hex editor to change them. The offsets in the file for v2.63 are
0x360, 0x364 - CPU,GPU (Both should be same)
0x36C - Bus (Should be half the CPU speed or less)

The values should be entered in hexadecimal. The default value for CPU/GPU is 3C (60 MHz in decimal) and the default value for bus is 1E (30 MHz in decimal).

Note that simply using any arbitrary value will not work. You will have to test and see which values for CPU/GPU and Bus speed work.

Credits:
Thanks to adrahil for helping with preventing the suspend mode.


Changelog v2.64
----------------------------------
While in Display Off mode, you can now also turn on the display by pushing the power switch to the suspend position.

Pressing the Screen button also works but I recommend using the power switch instead, because when you press the Screen button, the firmware sets its internal brightness variable to the next level, even though the screen is functioning at the original brightness. Thus if you leave it idle after turning on the display using the Screen button, and the screen dims due to the PSP being idle, when you press a button it will jump to the next brightness level.

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News/release from ruj89


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Xeeynamo has updated his smallhex app for psp:

Changelog:
1.3:
-Add "Go to offset"
-Correct more visualizer bug
-Only Hex
-Only Char
-Changed the char visualization
-More little changes

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News via psxscene


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Aerthel has today updated his app for the DS, heres the full details;

Hello there! This is actually my first post here but i've been reading the wiki and this forum for quite a time (and i have to say, you have a very nice nds homebrew community here). Some years ago, I began a project called 'Project Sheratan' but it was meant to produce a Flash game. To make a long story short, I didn't have the skills to create good Flash content, so I began searching for another platform to program on. When I learned about this community through a friend, the idea came back again.

-- Project Motivation --
This Project (though is not the same as before, i'm keeping the name) aims to create a Card Battle engine for RPG games on Nintendo DS, mimicking the Baten Kaitos series's card system. If you haven't played such games (shame on you! ), there are some pretty good YouTube videos like this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXtd26BWJwM to show how the system works. Basically, you have cards that control your characters movements and actions, and played in certain order will resultin flashing and devastating attack combos.

-- Current Project Status Info --

Latest Release: v0.011

Bottom screen Screenshot



Instructions:
* L/R changes the music
* Touch a card to display its name
* Touch a card while holding Down (or B for left-handed players) to discard it
* Touch a pair of cards while holding Up (or X for left-handed players) to swap them
* Touch a character miniPotrait to set him/her as the "selected character"
* Touch a card while holding Left (or Y for left-handed players) to play it
* Once you play a card, a combo will start, and the timer will activate. Try to finish your combo before the time runs out.
* To play cards in a combo, make sure their numbers go in ascending order like 0->1->2->3->4. You can start the combo with any card, but numberless ones won't result in a combo.
* Once the combo starts, the helping system will find the next playable cards and point them.

As always, you can find more info in the last post

Well, people, I managed to make some final adjustments that were keeping me from releasing a stable new build of Project Sheratan , so here it is

Current Version : v0.011
New Features:
* Cards are now playable! Play them in succesion (0,1,2,3..) to make a combo, but be warned, you have a limited amount of time to do this
* As I just mentioned, the combo timer is done.
* The card selection helping system activates when you play a card. If it's a numbered card, it will search your card for the most appropiate cards for you to play next. Obviously, it's just a help, you still need to select the cards to play them.
* The card tray now recieves your played cards and counts them, like the BK Origins battle system did
* The music is now loaded form the EFS, so music files are no longer a problem (build includes 8 tunes to demonstrate this)

New Controls:
* Touch a card with the stylus while holding Left or Y to play the card.

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News/release from Sylus 101


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News/release from roubignolo

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