25 Things You Never Used Your PSP for

Some are smart, some are silly, but I bet you haven't tried half of them!

1. Make a WWE Entrance

   Buy some cheap multimedia speakers that run on their own batteries and incorporate them into the jacket of your choice. Connect to you PSP and you'll now have the chance to implement your own entrance music next time you board a train, bus or go to a dental clinic. It's hard not to feel powerful when you're boarding the school bus to We Are The Champions, and slightly conspicuous. A perfect gag for students.

2. It's a bit of a PS3

   The PSP will work as a controller for PS3, so you can pretend you own one sixth of the PS3 kit. This will give the unit extra value since you can use it to pretend you're playing on a PS3 RIGHT NOW. This will help make PS3 tilt-sensitive games feel all the more unusual.

3. Infiltrate A Secure Installation

   Overcome security cameras by using a PSP playing a looped MPEG4 of an empty corridor in the video feed of the establishment of your choice's recording equipment. You'll have to spend a bit on a TV Out dongle, but only John McClain or MacGyver could stop you getting closer to those bonds in the vault.

4. Hold A Séance

   Use a FM transmitter module on your PSP to broadcast mysterious MP3's of the dead. Hold some charade of a séance in your front room, tune to the radio in the kitchen to the PSP's frequency and you can trigger whatever eerie sounds you want, when you want. When the radio is investigated it will prove to be on a dead channel. Spooky.

5. Here, Have My Card

   Scan all those business cards you've collected and store them as images on your PSP via a PC. Label the files in order with the file names ending in a number divisible by ten so new cards can then be added between existing files. Business-card-0 would be followed by Business-card-10, thus leaving nine spaces in between for new information.

6. Terrify Toddlers Via Their Imagination

   Use your animation skills on a PC to create something that looks like the display from the scanners from the movie Aliens. Make blobs appear in a pattern that suggests that they are outside the house and getting closer, then save the movie to your PSP and play it to your 5-year-old nephew. Let them watch the movie while they guzzle raw sugar and make a story up that you downloaded the PSP-only scanner software, and holy mother - they're outside! Also good for fancy dress.

7. Watch TV Anywhere

   There's a reason you haven't seen the LocationFree Base Station shouting at you from bus stops while you access a menu for it on your PSP. For it to enable you to use your PSP to watch TV via Wi-Fi needs a 300kbps broadband connection and you've probably not got that, and neither do those who take trains and buses. Still television on your PSP - think about it people.

8. Be Together While Comfortably Alone

   Play SOCOM online with friends, but instead of lunging in for battle just use the headset to chat while you watch all the same football match/movie/episode of Hollyoaks. This is the perfect way of maintaining social duties without you having to trek across town for the same old faces. Connect all the doddery old people you know together - be inventive. Save on phone calls costs. Have fun.

9. Transfer Data With A PC

   Take your work home from school, the office or your yacht by using your PSP as a portable hard-drive. You'll never have to look for that USB Memory Stick or burn a CD again and will always have your projects on you whenever urgently needed, you never know when a PowerPoint demo of Hull's waterworks will coming useful. It's so simple that you should be doing this already, especially with the 4GB Memory Sticks doing their rounds.

10. Custom Soundtracks In A Public House

    A radio transmitting module is not only a great gadget for supernatural pranks; it has other more reasonable applications. Ask your local's friendly barman if he could tune the pub's radio to your PSP and you've got custom soundtracks in your favourite boozery.

11. It's A Portable VCR

    The Neuros MPEG4 Recorder 2 is a unit that lets you save a video source directly to your Pro Duo Memory Stick. It can be programmed just like a VCR to record whatever you want and features far less hassle than compressing files and exporting them in the right format. More so, it's likely that you will be able to connect up to your PlayStation 3 and download movies via its hard drive. Watch recorded shows on your PSP. Never miss out on One Tree Hill. Ever again.

12. Store An Address Book

    Take screenshots of individual address book pages from your computer, crop and resize them with ordered file names and you've got a slightly laborious way of keeping another record of the numbers you need.

13. Store Mobile Phone Data

    Use your PSP in a more direct way by using it to store your mobile phone's data. You'll need to swap the files via a PC, but with two USB cables you could do it quickly in an internet café. Should your phone be stolen or dropped in vinegar you've not lost all your addresses. Just don't lose your PSP too.

14. Receive Website Info Without Logging In

    Look for the RSS icon when looking at news sites on your PSP. If you click on the icon you will be able to save it as a RSS channel to your console and play your chosen news broadcast or radio show from the RSS channel selector. And you thought you could only play the demo files.

15. Fight Work-Induced Depression

    Place a short video clip of a holiday destination on your Memory Stick and play it as you make your way to work in the morning. Watch again whenever you've had to put up with another meeting about how to incorporate pointless jargon into everyday transactions and you'll find each day more bearable.

16. Take Money Off English-Speakers Abroad

    Load two PSP's with Talkman and any of the Passport To… series of guides to make you an instant expert of the city of your (thus far limited) choice. Make money in Rome by being famous as that guide who speaks fluent English and has an electronic parrot, but make sure you plan your tours well. I'd recommend something that's both unusual and useful for someone using a PSP all day. I suggest “Famous Roman power sockets of note.”

17. Free Text Messages

    Saving money from sending text messages by finding a free SMS provider website (Google will help you) and using your PSP as a separate text message machine. You will be able to text at any Wi-Fi hotspot in town, even the sanctuary of your own toilet.

18. It's A Photo Album

    Use your PSP as a photo album. By storing digital pictures on a Memory Stick you'll be able to show off your beautiful other to random strangers and always have an excuse to bring your PSP to family gatherings. You can even pretend that the image of a new born baby you just downloaded is yours - girls go giddy for that sort of thing.

19. PSP Searchlight

    The days of fumbling for your keys in the dark are over when you've got your PSP on you. Play a JPEG of a pure white screen and turn the brightness up. You'll have enough light to read with, and will have no problem finding what you've lost, or attracting moths. Also handy when you're alone in the forest.

20. Signal Foreign Submarines

    Make two images in any PC program - one black, the other white. Since your PSP enables you to swap between images, you'll instantly have your own Morse code transmitter. By turning up the brightness and swapping the two images you could signal a submarine waiting silently offshore, or even save the day in some Famous Five way.

21. You're Dumped And It's Your Fault

    End a relationship quickly and with little argument by saving some uncompromising pictures of yourself and another participant onto your boy/girlfriend/parent's PSP. You obviously mixed up each other's memory cards last time you played Tekken and such a mistake could have happened to anyone. The dastardly beauty of this is that you could mark the folder as "private files, my eyes only" and so claim invasion of privacy. Their nosey nature made you stray away. Which makes it your moral victory.

22. Internet Phone Calls

    Connecting a mobile phone to your PSP is already possible albeit slightly illegal. The technology is in place to allow you to enable you to phone friends via Wi-Fi and have communication between similarly equipped PSPs. Proper mobile phone support will be available in future, however, which is going to be massive.

23. Add A Joystick

    Any decent game shop will supply you with a small joystick that you can use to place over the analogue nub. You'll then have arcade control of any classic arcade game collections you've bought.

24. Control A PC

    Google "PSP Gamepad for PC", download the software to your computer and follow the instructions. You'll just have to move files and rename it so its nothing too techie but the upshot is that you will be able to use your PSP as a wireless PC gamepad.

25. Finally, Play A Game

    Oh sure, you could do all these freaky inventive things and more with your PSP, but why not go back to basics? Settle down on your favourite armchair, put on the radio and PLAY A GAME. Go on, slot Killzone Liberation or Ultimate Ghosts "n" Goblins or Ridge Racer 2 and relax. Play game on your PSP…who'd have thunk it?