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How to get E-books on your PSP |
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Written by http://gamefries.blogspot.com
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Saturday, 26 March 2005 |
Two days after the launch and I'm already looking around to try and
squeeze extra functionality on my PSP. Well, I got to thinking, the
high contrast screen would be great for e-books. Why not? Might as well
start hacking this glorious new piece of electronics ASAP.
Originally posted at http://gamefries.blogspot.com
So for today's lesson, we'll be using Davinci's Notebook, provided by the wonderful folks over at Project Gutenberg.
And here are some steps, you know, for people that like that sort of thing:
- Click here to download PaperlessPrinter. It's completely free for non-commercial use. If you want to check out the company, hit up this link. The software does nag you once in awhile to register, but there's definitely no spyware.
- Install it. This adds a new printer called "PaperlessPrinter." This is what you want to use. Ch...ch...check it out:

- Open the file that ebook you downloaded. Go file->print then click preferences after you have the PaperlessPrinter selected.
- Make your shit look like this:

- Now hit OK, and click Print. You'll see a dialog pop up asking you which file type you want. Hit jpeg, of course:

- Click
OK on that shit and you'll be brought to the meat of the program. Hit
the quality tab to adjust the quality. This adds a bit of blur around
the letters, but otherwise is unnoticable. I recommend laying it down
around 30, and set the jpeg to greyscale just to keep things clean. I
strongly recommend making a seperate folder, as this saves each page as
a seperate jpeg.

- Click
OK and it'll start hacking away at the files. For a 478 page book, it
only took about 4 minutes on my measly 1.2ghz Athlon. This is what you
should see:

- Awww
yeah. After it crunches away, you'll be left with a whackload of jpegs
to plop on your PSP. Here is a picture of the device viewing the book
we just made:

On
the editorial side, I apologize for being so picture-heavy, and also a
little bit picture stupid. I enjoy visual aids, and am terrrrible with
photoshop. In any case, there are a few notes to add to this method:
- The
virtual printer you installed can be used for *ANY* document. This
includes websites, text files, word files, essentially anything that
can be printed.
- The text is small, but relatively high
contrast. I can read it fine, but my vision is also good. Anybody with
bad vision may not have much success with this method.
- The
files generated are HUGE without any encryption. DaVinci's notebook
rang in at an astounding 150 mb. Lowering the quality will lower the
file size significantly.
- Please e-mail me
if you have any suggestions at all for improving this method. I'll get
right on it. It's a remedial sledgehammering way to get e-books on the
PSP, and I'm sure there's a better method.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 26 March 2005 )
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