Dark AleX and M33 release 5.00 CFW

DAX and the M33 team have released 5.00M33 CFW. Click through to go to Dark AleX's forum and get all the details. Two days to release this cfw, DAX must be slipping (just kidding). Thanks for all the hard (and quick) work guys.

Official Firmware 5.00 info

From the Sony blog:

"Let’s start with the v5.00 update for PSP. In this version, you’ll notice the addition of the PlayStation Network icon on the XMB. You can now sign up for PlayStation Network, manage your account and access PlayStation Store directly from your PSP - meaning you can download games directly to your PSP while connected via Wi-Fi. Getting games, demos and trailers while on-the-go has never been easier!

The current PlayStation Store on the PC will be down in the interim as we take some time to revamp. Don’t worry, it will re-launch soon after we’ve made some tweaks. Please keep in mind, if you already have a PlayStation Network account, simply sign in on your PSP using your existing information. The same account and wallet can be used on PS3 and PSP. You will be able to check out the PlayStation Store on the PSP soon, as we’ll have a video demo featuring Grace Chen posted soon on the Blog.

Update v5.00 adds a sleep timer option that can be used while you are playing music on your PSP. In addition, we’ve added a full screen keyboard option for text entry and have redesigned the background of the XMB. You’ll be able to find all of the information on Firmware v5.00 here once it goes live."

Sounds like a few nice (small) improvements in addition to PSN.

PSPoste beta 7 released: full featured PSP email app

Want to send/receive email via your PSP? PSPoste is best way to achieve this. From PSPoste.org: "It supports the SMTP and POP3 protocols (possible future IMAP support), and provides a skinnable user interface allowing the user to retrieve, compose and display messages from multiple email servers. Several input methods are included with PSPoste, choose the one best suited for you.

Here's a list of what's changed in Beta 7:

• Support more IR keyboards by using the pspirkeyb library, see PSPoste/Data/pspirkeyb/ for configuration of your keyboard.
• Better random number generation for TLS based connections, acknowledgements to Zx81 for his work on PSPSSH and Theodore Tso for the original RNG work.
• On first start, users will be prompted to press buttons randomly to generate the random seed file.
• Use the extra RAM of the PSP Slim.
• Fix a crash when opening the settings window when no network connections are defined.
• Fix another crash opening the settings window that would occur randomly.
• Fix a bug in the logging mechanism that meant errors and output weren't properly being written out to the log files.
• Fix a problem connecting using a manually configured WPA connection.
• Make the cursor visible at all times while typing (as opposed to blinking throughout).
• Explicitly load the IrDA module so IR Keyboards work on firmwares > 3.03OE.
• Adjust heap and thread stack sizes.
• Fix some memory leaks and uninitialzed variables.
• Set the timezone to whatever the PSP has configured."

PSPoste has only been fully tested on the 1.5 firmware but there is some support for recent cfw's (see bottom of news page on PSPost.org). PSPoste is well worth giving a try if you have a serious need for a homebrew email app.

Download via Sourceforge.

Squarez now available for 3.xx and 4.xx cfw

Akadewboy has done a little modification to allow the classic Squarez game to play on the most recent cfw's. Here is my review and download for 1.5 firmware but now thanks to akadewboy everyone can play this great homebrew game. Well done.