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Lightly whisk 6,400 colored Post-it notes into a team of ten geeky engineering students, top with a fetish for retro arcade games and bake on a four-storey building overnight and whaddya get?

Just as the PlayStation Portable has had its firmware updated to make it that little bit more useful, so we receive news of an unusual trial involving the Sony handheld system in the UK.

The British Computer Society is reporting a joint announcement by Sony and Stanford University yesterday regarding a collaboration between the university’s Folding@home project and PlayStation 3 owners to use the consoles to conduct cancer research.

The games industry has long been acknowledged as a lucrative business to be involved with, which is why reports from market analysts on the prospects for new consoles command such attention. The latest, from respected analysts IDC…

In today’s ‘Only in Japan’ corner, we have quite possibly the finest chimpanzee-based GPS sleuthing game ever to grace a nation’s cellphones.

So much of what passes for news in this technology business we all love and cherish is based on rumor and hearsay it’s often difficult to know what to believe. Naturally, you can trust us, particularly when we pass on the good word that Nintendo’s GameCube is actually not officially dead.

After the unwarranted hype surrounding Apple’s iPhone, which won’t see the light of day for months yet, we now have a little intrigue over a similarly hybrid phone that never was and never will be.

The news European and Australian gamers have been waiting for has finally been confirmed – Sony will launch the PlayStation 3 in those territories on March 23.

This morning saw Sony Computer Entertainment Inc Japan (SCEI) let loose the latest version of the PlayStation 3 firmware, which adds a couple of data encryption fixes for online security and - most significantly - support for e-money readers.

We’ve seen these peculiar Wiimote attachments around for a couple of weeks now but they’re finally available to buy from Vis-a-Vis in Japan.

In a shock move, the PlayStation godfather, Ken Kutaragi, has been eased out of his position as president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) and will be replaced by Kaz Hirai, the head of SCEI’s US division.

The recently launched PlayStation 3 and Wii game consoles remain popular on Internet auction sites, but the price they are fetching is falling as launch-related hype dies down.

Looks like someone wasn’t paying attention over at Sony when they issued the PSP firmware update that took it to version 3.0 in all its PS3 goodness yesterday.

People have pushed and shoved for it, queued overnight in the rain for it and its been sold online at great profit. Now the Taco Bell fastfood chain is offering a “lifetime” of tacos in exchange for a PlayStation 3.

So, that’s it — we now have three so-called next-gen consoles, everyone’s at home playing Resistance or Super Monkey Ball and the lines have gone. Here’s our vid of the last big launch — Nintendo’s Wii, which was all over the place on Sunday.

The next-generation video games battle became a three-console race on Sunday as retailers across the U.S. and Canada put Nintendo’s Wii on sale.

A week after it first appeared in Japan, Sony’s PlayStation 3 console went on sale in the U.S. and three other countries on Friday.

What’s this? The Wii isn’t even out yet and Nintendo is taunting us by admitting it will do its usual refresh thing and release Wii Mark 2 in 2007?

Having come up trumps with a PS3 on Saturday, Martyn Williams gave us a few initial impressions of using Sony’s great hope in Japan itself.

This picture’s worth several thousand words — or at least a few hours in the maw of a rampaging mob. “Yes,” it says, “I got a PlayStation 3 but you — almost certainly — did not.”

Even if you’ve already seen our various videos of the PS3 launch yesterday, marveled at the length of the line and read the reports filed as we emerged bruised and battered from the bedlam in Tokyo…

PlayStation 3 consoles were selling at about a 50 percent mark-up on their retail price on Saturday evening in Japan, about 12 hours after the console made its worldwide debut.

As promised, here’s our video of the mayhem at the PlayStation 3 launch in Tokyo this morning.

The PS3 launched this morning in Tokyo and — naturally — there were massive lines of people. The video below shows about a quarter of the line at 7am at one Tokyo store.

It’s a dirty job but somebody’s gotta get up at 4am to go get you guys some paparazzi pics of sleazy nerds making out with their PS3s tomorrow morning on the mean, stinking streets of Tokyo.

Queues of gamers anxious to get their hands on the PlayStation 3 have begun forming outside Tokyo electronics stores that plan to begin selling the machine on Saturday morning.

It’s no big surprise but Sony has announced today that it has upgraded the PlayStation 3 firmware to enable it to actually use the PlayStation Network online service. The move up to version 1.10 comes in the nick of time — just two days before the November 11 Japan launch of the PS3.

Yeah, there are squillions of PS3 videos out there now that the launch is a mere three days away but how many of them come to you fresh from Tokyo, feature Sony babes AND are hosted by housewives’ favorite Martyn Williams? Eh, eh? Check yourself…

The first TV commercials for the PS3 appeared in Japan last week and you can see a selection on the official PlayStation Japan website at the link after the jump.

After initially cutting back international launch plans for the PlayStation 3, Sony has expanded them again, and will start selling the device in Hong Kong and Taiwan on November 17, it said this week.

As if the laptop battery recall and stumbles towards the launch of the PlayStation 3 weren’t enough for it to deal with, Sony said this week that shipments of its PSP handheld are well below expectations.

Sony’s PlayStation 3 has cleared another pre-launch hurdle with the awarding of approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

What would a fine Tokyo Saturday morning be without another chance to poke fun at analyze Sony’s battery and PS3 fandango? And what better way to do so than through the wonder of video? Click away.

A large recall of Sony-made batteries by PC makers and problems that have hit the launch of the PlayStation 3 console have caused Sony to cut its full year profit forecast by more than a third on Thursday.

Since we’re on the subject of virtual human playthings, how about this for a dose of weird?

Toshiba’s plans for the future of the Cell processor seem to see it powering everything from cellphones to washing machines but our video from last week’s Ceatec shows it doing a couple of far more interesting tricks.

Not that it’s got a lot to do with gadgets, Japan or anything else we cover here, but last night’s South Park World of Warcraft episode (that’s Kyle in the fetching green dress there) was a heck of a start to season 10.

This year’s Tokyo Game Show had it all — the PS3, the Wii, booth babes galore, otaku and more. We’ve got it all in our handy 7-minute video report after the jump. Check it out…

The chance to play the new PlayStation 3 and Wii consoles drew over 190,000 people to the Tokyo Game Show, the event organizers said Monday.