Start your “Life with PlayStation”

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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)

LWP Ike

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:

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.

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405 Comments

  • LMAO!! Not what i was expecting at 11:45pm….SONY ROCKS!!!!

  • I was lucky enough to get this last night when it was “accidentally” leaked on the public servers. After about a day with it, I must say that I’m impressed. It’s nice to be able to read news throughout the world as well as see the weather in major city. One suggestion for me would be to add Pittsburgh to the list, so that I know what the weather’s like in my area :) Good job though!

  • Yes SONY FTW!!! You guys rock, I know it will take time to update the servers but thank you for another wonderful FREE application!

  • Love the new features and look and feel of Life with PlayStation. This also appears to have fixed the crashing issues I had with the last version of folding@home. But like others have said please bring back the browser ZOOM feature. Not everyone in the world sits only a couple of feet from their TV. I’d also like to see a web browser where we can go where ever we want. Perhaps a stand alone Internet channel? I can’t wait to see what other channels you guys release down the road. Maybe a YouTube channel? or Netflix channel? Those would rock.

  • This is a great improvement. If you want to make a real killer application then implement full Google-Earth feature, which allows user to zoom in to street level. I think this will stun most of the people to spin google earth at their HD TVs :)

    An additional feature could be to show your online friends on the globe.

  • Congratulations for getting this thing done. Now that its done could you give us updates on other things that need to be done? And here’s a hint to avoid complaints, overestimate the date of completion. For example, Home should be done by the end of November. But instead of saying the end of November, say the end of December. I am not particularly interested in Home as much as I am interested in the following:

    – custom soundtracks for all games (to make it easier to accomplish, I suggest removing some unnecessary items from the in-game xmb like video listings and ps store listings)
    – multiple data album edit
    – matching psp functionality on the ps3 (i.e. adding rss feeds, adding 30x and 120x playback for audio, adding .5x-2x playback for video, video scene selection)
    – background music when on the PlayStation Store

    All I ask for is some indication that the features above are being worked on and a time they will be available.

  • great work! thanks!

  • works great but idk if this was mentioned or not

    when you browse the news articles the zoom feature isnt there and should be allowed thats used from the ps3 internet browser

    would make it easier for the 1080i users that have the 32′ 1366×768 tv’s that arent full 1920 res cuz its a little hard to read if your not right infront of it

  • “in addition to adding a unique ranking system showcasing top contributors from around the world.”

    Why not just add in trophy support! ;p

  • Noam, I have a questions: I’ve noticed the stars in the background of the glob are gone. Any chance of bringing them back? Perhaps this time complete with constellations?

  • yo I see you left the cities in Mississippi out.. what…we’re not important now? nice job on the update though. when will yall add more cities to the globe?

  • It’s pretty nice, however I do have a few suggestions for future improvements:

    1. A way to see what the weather will actually be like today/tomorrow. It’s not really the most useful thing in the world to just say the current conditions. I’d love to get the forecast from within LwP.

    2. A live radar overlay would be awesome for storm tracking.

    3. I’d love to be able to add my own RSS feeds.

    Also, the news items listed for Minneapolis are really out of date. For example, one of the headlines is about John McCain’s acceptance speech at the Republican Convention, but that was quite some time ago. Please fix that if possible because I like up to date news. :D

  • wow this seems like a great feature! thanks sony! i like how it jumps city to city if you go idle for a little bit.

    i wish i could check it out more tonight but i have class in the morning so guess i’ll have something to look forward to tomorrow! :D

  • Looking really great, but what happened to Copenhagen? The capital of Denmark :-(

    //WhiteWolf – That actually live there

  • ADD MORE CITIES
    TAKE CANADA SERIOUSLY
    YOU ONLY HAVE 12 AMERICAN CITIES AND 3 CANADIAN CITIES

    I”M PISSED OFF AND DISSAPOINTED

    the end.

    Seriously, Fix This Crap.

  • Just downloaded, not done looking yet, but one improvement I strongly suggest is a way to scroll down through news articles using the Blu Ray remote. Since this is a service that a lot of people will use while just sort of lounging, and none of the stuff is interactive on a level that you would require a controller, remote functionality seems natural. Overall though, I’m very pleased with what I see so far, nice update. The fact that the system is using F@H the whole time is a cherry on top.

  • hey i got some few suggestions

    1. can you guys make the live camera so we can view it in full screen? because its really small :)

    2. can you add the time of that place when i see it?

    3. (most important) can you make malta viewable too? (its the small island under italy) plzzzzzzz i want to see our wether and news and the live camera of malta too :( its where i live

  • I like it!! Wish there were more cities, but I dig this alot!

  • This is very cool! Thanks!

    Out of curiousity:
    Will we be able to add a custom exact location to fetch weather information for? I can understand not wanting to clutter up the map with a weather icon for every city, but letting us place one (or more?) specific points would be awesome. So would the ability to add a few of our own news feeds to that location.

    As it is, it’s a great, eyecatching screensaver for when company is over; the background folding is a major plus!

  • @44:

    Dude, you can use your own playlists NOW. It’s in the music options.

  • Great update, I spent some time just enjoying the globe in high definition. I have two suggestions so far:

    1.) Is it possible to zoom into the text when reading the news in the pop up windows? I tried every button but I don’t think there is a zoom in/out feature to help me read the text easier.

    2.) Is it possible to increase the movement of the globe in a future update? The movements feel a bit slow/sluggish to me.

    Other than that, great stuff so far.

  • I love you sony. :( Seriously.

  • Yay! Finally!

  • Nice, but like a lot of people said, it would be a good idea to add more cities. I also agree with adding zoom functionality to the news reports in the browser as it can be hard to read.

    Also, I really like the transition between the Live channel and the Folding@Home channel. It’s pretty neat how it smoothly transitions and keeps the same position you were looking at on the globe.

  • Only one thing that’d make this better…trophies :P

  • Just noticed another thing – some of the pictures in the live-cam thingie, shows cities like Budapest is right now in the dark of the night, but that isn’t so – they’re in the same timezone as I am, which means it’s 09:19 there – anybody knows why?

    //WhiteWolf

  • @the_matrix
    A full Google-Earth feature would cost too much to do it for free. Google has quite a few people go out and take those photos as well as update them since locations change over time.

  • GREAT! This is better than Halo! JK

  • Thanks for the update and new features! PS3 keeps getting better every day. :-)

  • Good stuff

    Hope it’s still got an auto-switch off, else it could lead to less ‘Folding’

    I set my ps3 to turn off after an hour when I’m done playing, so it can ‘Fold’ an hour into the night

  • Awesome work Sony

    Hopefully there will be more cities added

    as well as a radar system for tracking storms or coming weather like the news channels

    I know it’s still an early version so keep up the great work guys

  • Life with PS is great so far. though there is a bug when launching the browser, causing the PS3 to freeze and force you to reboot.

  • Well I’ve been checking it out a bit more and do compare it with the WII channels. Yes I own a WII, but of course not as great and precious as the PS3 is :-P Anywho, I love the fact that the news as well as weather is integrated in just one channel.

    Though, where’s the weather forecast for each city? I don’t see a week not even a day forecast for the cities around the globe, only current weather status. Maybe an option. That’s actually my only wish about that, other than that, its just great! A wonderful feature. I only need to see why in earth (how ironic) I end up in San Francisco when opening LWP while my account setting is on GMT +1 Amsterdam. Though getting to Holland isn’t that much of a problem. Its quicker going from the US to Holland on the PS3 than by plane :-D

    Though Noam, do you know why that happens?

  • This is nice, sort of.

    It originally was supposed to give me updates from my home area as well wasn’t it?

    I mean for the most part I find this update useless. It’s prettier, and somewhat more enticing to use, but other than the fact it replaces my folding@home with Life with Playstation in the xmb, I find this to be pretty standard useless stuff.

    I was hoping to be able to check out my local weather, and my local news headlines you know things that would make it useful to use and check. I mean if you’re going to tell people we have this nifty life with playstation thing it should be able to be incorporated with everyones life who owns a playstation.

    Don’t get me wrong the news it spits out is important. But I’d rather wake up, check the local weather, traffic, and be on my way. I’m not interested in something that happened in finland, or Hanoi. I can get more meaningful news at digg.com, and wont’ have to hear the light piano music while I read.

    I don’t know I guess I just feel let down by it.

  • @Wildcat26 Erm the channel is meant as global not US only, so depending on where you wind up on the globe you’ll get the national news and you “do” get local news as long as your city is on the globe. Just go to Phoenix for example, click on more news and voila… you’ll get local news in Phoenix. At the bottom of the Google page you can find more stuff about Phoenix.

    Oh yes another thought, which more people have asked… zoom in on the Google browser like with the Internet browser. I’m about 7ft away from 26inch Sony Bravia TV and its indeed difficult to read from that distance.

  • Re: 64, and a few others

    Why are people moaning, it’s FREE

    If you don’t like it then just ask for a full refund of your ‘Life With Playstation’ purchase price

  • Don’t know hiw many users that are in Greenland, but Nuuk the capitol of Greenland is also missing – would be nice to at least have the capitols both for the countries but also for the US and Africa, each state capitol.

    Overall I am happy with it, looks and feels great and there are left place for improvement, this is clearly a 8 of 10 for me.

    //WhiteWolf

  • @cc_star
    TV shows are free, but there are critics of TV shows. People are just suggesting obvious ways to improve the service. I personally don’t care about it. I just hope this frees up developers and resources that can be dedicated to more useful stuff(see post 56).

  • Sure, this app might have been developed in the US, but come on, since this is also released in Europe I should be able to switch from Fahrenheit to Celsius.

  • few suggestive additions if they ain’t in it yet.
    1) Default location setting when you open the app.

    2) Ability to manually add more “nodes” on the globe. where each node has local news/weather/stockquotes.

    3) Ability to see your friend’s loc as represented by individual “node” (

  • can you guys implement a way to set whatever city you want to as your home R3 city? A lot of us are being directed to ones that aren’t our actual cities (just nearby).

    another possible thing for the future is hourly/tomorrow/this week weather details for cities, that would be really useful.

    Also music selection by mood isn’t working in Life (used to work in Folding@home).

    Great job overall guys!

  • @86: You can. It’s in the options.

    I just figured out I can check my gmail account and do some creative web browsing within LwP! This is great!

  • @Onna That’s fine that it’s global, but that makes this nothing more than a novelty UNLESS your city is on the map. I should at least be able to customize it so that MY city is on the map, so that I can see LOCAL news as well. Otherwise how is it life with playstation? It’s just the news of 30 or so cities on the globe. Whoopty do.

    @cc_star

    Why are people moaning? Just because something is free doesn’t mean it’s worthwhile. Ever got a [DELETED] gift from a friend? It was free, did you moan or take it back? I’m sure you did, especially if it had any value. But we can’t take this back and get something else. Sure I already used my folding at home, and I’ll continue to do so, but I was expecting much more from this update. Especially since it was delayed by about a month and a half.

  • @86

    You can switch from Fahrenheit to Celsius. Hit triangle, go to current channel, settings, and then celsius.

  • I meant 89. not 86, sry

  • ok first off so far i like this app alot

    but i have one huge problem
    i dont have a HDTV and on that note every time i go use the web browser on my ps3 i have to R3 to zoom in to see what im reading…. but with this the words are sooooo small and blurry on my tv i cant make out anything even when im face to face with my tv its still very hard to make out words

    well all im asking is if you can update it again so we people with poopy tvs can see the writing would be AWESOME

    also one more thing about the music…. how does it know if the song is calm and stuff i have to say i really like that about this app

    well thanks and i hope you can get back to me on this

    keep it up guys

  • nvmd, sry about so many posts. it’s late and im tired.

  • Thanks for the new feature. Just one question, will there be more cities added in the future? I live in Las Vegas, so it just directs me to the San Francisco and L.A. area.

  • @89

    how can you check gmail?

  • *laughs* It’s all good, man.

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