Sony may make it hard to realize the full potential of your Sony PSP, but they sure know how to make hardware. So when you have a gadget you really love, it's time to test the boundaries and find ways to do the unexpected.

Popular Science (http://www.popsci.com/popsci/how20/f42c541df7e66010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html) treats us to some simple instructions for reading e-books, watching video on your PSP, or playing some SNES or "homebrew" cloned games.

To read e-books you just convert text into images you can read on the PSP. The suggested software is PSPphoto (http://tokyopia.com/). You can even get RSS feeds using MioMediaBox (http://mioplanet.com/) .

The instructions look pretty generic for compressing video files. Programs suggested include:
* PSP Video 9 (http://www.pspvideo9.com/) (free, for Windows)
* ffmpegX (http://homepage.mac.com/major4/) (free for Mac)
* iPSP (http://ipsp.kaisakura.com/) ($20 Mac or PC)
* XilisoftDVD to PSP Suite (http://xilisoft.com/) ($45 Windows)
Convert to a memory stick file at 320x240 resolution, and 15fps, and you're set!

To play the video games:
Download the games zip file here (http://flashenabled.com/h20/psp/games.zip) which also includes a SNES emulator and some ROMs. Run KXploit from the zip file here (http://flashenabled.com/h20/psp/kxploit_1.5.zip) and you're well on your way.

Check out the full instructions a the Popular Science article here (http://www.popsci.com/popsci/how20/f42c541df7e66010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html) .