Life with Playstation available on PSN

[Queasy]

Link

If you?ve ever wished you could find everything you need to start your day on your PLAYSTATION 3, Life with PlayStation give you one more reason to do so. This free service delivers a new way for you to utilize your PS3 to instantly access real-time news and information like weather updates from over 60 cities around the world.

Life with PlayStation provides a stunning interactive globe, a 3D world map that you can twirl around to see live cloud movement courtesy of the University of Wisconsin, combined with up-to-date weather information from the Weather Channel, top news headlines provided by Google news, and live web cam images via the Earth Television Network ? all localized to the select city. And why not have your favorite soundtrack playing in the background while you go through your morning ritual (just think, no TV commercials and teasers to find out if you need to bring an umbrella to work)? You?re on your own for your morning caffeine fix.

For those following the progress of Hurricane Ike throughout last week, we were able to track the storm?s real-time movement from Life with PlayStation. (See the screenshots below)

We?re also really excited to share that this new lifestyle service is running in parallel with our Folding@home project. Essentially, this means that while you?re taking a stroll on Life with PlayStation, you?re automatically helping Stanford University to work towards curing diseases such as Alzheimer?s and various types of cancers. For those familiar with Folding@home, we?ve made some enhancements for more advanced simulations of protein folding and support for wider variety of simulations, in addition to adding a unique ranking system showcasing top contributors from around the world.

I?ve also put together a quick video demo to make sure you?re checking out all the new features here:

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Life with PlayStation is now available for download by selecting the Folding@home icon under ?Network? on the XMB. Give it a whirl, we look forward to reading your feedback.

Sounds pretty interesting. Let's hear some impressions!

edit: official press release

Life With PlayStation(R) Comes to PLAYSTATION(R)3 on September 18, Worldwide

Proposing a New Life Style with PLAYSTATION 3

TOKYO, Sept. 18 ? Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) today announced that it would release Life with PlayStation(R) for PLAYSTATION(R)3 (PS3(R)) today, September 18, 2008, worldwide simultaneously. Life with PlayStation is a new lifestyle service that offers users a new visual and interactive way to use their PS3 to access news and information from around the world, only possible on the PS3's feature-rich platform.

As the initial content, LIVE CHANNEL will be released for Life with PlayStation. Through network connected PS3, it delivers worldwide news and information centering on two themes, "place" and "time" on a world map interface. Some of the live content includes; cloud imagery (provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison Space Science and Engineering Center), along with weather information (provided by The Weather Channel), news headlines (provided by Google News(TM)), and live camera images (partially provided by The Earth Television Network) of nearly 60 cities around the globe. Through LIVE CHANNEL, PS3 users will be able to enjoy worldwide news and live information free of charge. In addition to LIVE CHANNEL, Life with PlayStation will continually deliver a wide variety of interactive content and channels to living rooms through network connected PS3s to further enhance the world of entertainment made possible by PS3.

PS3 users can easily join Life with PlayStation by simply clicking the Folding@home*1 icon on the network column of XMB(TM) (XrossMediaBar) that will update to Life with PlayStation.

With the latest update, Folding@home will support more advanced simulation of protein fold, and will also support PS3's unique Folding@home ranking system, which enables users to see where they stand among the worldwide contributors based on their level of contribution. SCE will vigorously promote the expansion of the world of PS3 by introducing new services that will open up new possibilities and enjoyment in interactive entertainment.

*1 Folding@home is a distributed computing*2 project run by Stanford University which aims to understand protein folding and misfolding, and how these are related to diseases and many forms of cancer. PS3 provides approximately 74% (as of February 2008) of the computing power in Folding@home and over 1 million PS3 users has participated in this project.

*2 Distributed computing is an approach adopted by universities and research laboratories to utilize immense computing power without the use of central supercomputers. Small computing tasks are assigned to each user's computer and the results are collected after computation is complete.

* For more information, please see the official website (http://www.playstation.com/life/).

 

[fatpat268]

Eh, it's pretty lame right now.

News articles pop up the web browser with incredibly small text, which makes damn near unreadable unless you're one foot away from the screen. If you're on a couch several feet away, forget about trying to read it. The browser lacks the functionality of the actual PS3 browser, which makes no sense...but that's Sony for ya. Why they didn't just integrate the text articles and make it look all seamless is beyond me. Whatever.

Also, there's an incredible lack of cities present. Texas only has one city, Houston, and in the entire southeast only Atlanta and Miami are represented. Also curiously missing is Boston. I'm sure sony can easily add more cities in the future though.

It's obvious that Sony is trying to imitate Nintendo's Wii Weather/News, but unfortunately they water the concept down and release it. It's nowhere near as cool or interesting as it looks in screenshots and videos. The news isn't necessarily specific to any one city. For example, if I point over atlanta, I get news about some drug bust in Italy or something like that. Yea, that makes sense.

I like how the clouds and everything are mapped out, but as it is, it is pretty useless. They could've added a five day forecast for the cities, and allow you toggle radar images on and off to see if rain is coming your way. Maybe in future updates, but as it stands, LWP is about a two minute novelty before you get bored with it.

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

Originally posted by: fatpat268
Eh, it's pretty lame right now.

News articles pop up the web browser with incredibly small text, which makes damn near unreadable unless you're one foot away from the screen. If you're on a couch several feet away, forget about trying to read it.

.

I find this to be a common problem with the PS3. I have a 42" TV and have difficulty reading much of the onscreen content from my coach 8-10 feet away.