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

  • @215: Sounds like a personal problem. Remote Play works fine for me. It even shows a PSP instead of a DS3 during start-up when it shows you the controls. Don’t know why it won’t work for you……and really don’t care ’cause your entire post was whining and complaining about something being taken away that actually wasn’t.

  • Nice job, I love the update. Life with Playstation has been done really well.

    The only complaint I would have is that you have not included any Scottish cities, it would be nice if you could at least include the Scottish capital and where I live, Edinburgh so I can get more accurate news and weather forecasts.

    Thanks.

  • My only complaint is no zoom on the web pages/news stories. It’s a chore to read on an sdtv.

  • @252…

    Nice catch … didn’t even notice the DS3/PSP thing…SONY, you’re awesome!

  • I’ll admit I wasn’t excited for this at all. I pictured a Wii news sort of app that was less than stellar but by the looks of it this is quite functional. I actually want to give this a try.

  • I’m honestly waiting for the people who kept complaining that they wanted this so badly when it was delayed to come on here and complain like the many others.

    I haven’t touched it yet (still at work…then class tonight..boooo!) but I see it this way: What we have now is a prototype, if you will, an unfinished version. As they have stated before, LWP will grow, add channels, etc. This is one of those things that will grow as people request things. Things that are asked for often have been answered by developers and do to the global scale of LWP, this idea is no exception. As features are added, content is added, and so, LWP will flesh out into something more than anyone probably expected. Or hell, it could fail miserably. But for now, it’s free, it’s here, and it’s interesting what this holds for the future. If you were expecting a life changing application, you need to pull your head out of your ass and come back to reality with the rest of us. Give it some time people. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

  • @257: Shh…..too much logic at once will scare these peons.

    LwP Version 1.0. It’s just getting started, people.

  • It is very cool! I would like to see a personalised news feeder at the top of the screen also, and more cities of course.

  • Really great so far. I do have a couple of qualms though:

    1: More local coverage would be awesome, particularly with weather. London’s weather isn’t the whole UK’s weather.

    2: I have a HDTV, and even I have trouble reading the news stories. A zoom/font size function would be much appreciated.

    3: Custom RSS feeds would also be nice. On the XMB or as a channel on here, I don’t mind.

  • I will say that some of you non-whiners have made many great suggestions for future updates.

  • come on i dont want to update folding at home
    ugghh

  • Text zooming is a must, asap.

  • awesome guys!!Good efort!I just have a few thoughts about this…

    1)Im from Greece and Athens is not included…thats too bad for us here!!

    2)Add zoom function in the news browser…That would gonna be really useful!

    3)Add time indicator for its city in the world…

    I hope you read our feedback to make Life With Playstation even better!!

  • can you put in a zoom or magnify feature in it for the news articles. i can’t read anything. aside from that its awesome

  • ok now LWP is out next is home! hopefully… any new news on that?

  • @Razorbak86

    Quote: With all due respect, you are simply wrong. I KNOW it doesn’t work with Remote Play, because the PSP interface says this progam is not available through Remote Play.

    Answer:

    Yes it can.
    Video:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT4QBoibVts

  • Noam,

    Can you guys add trophies to folding@home? This would probably bring a lot more people into the project.

  • You guys need alot more cities. Hopefully they will be added in future updates

  • My life with PlayStation started in the 0’s with the original PlayStation, I haven’t stoped since :o .

  • AWESOME STUFF GUYS, THANK YOU, IT WORKS GREAT!!! :D

  • Will we be able to, eventually, get indepth weather for cities not on there…. like wind predictions and stuff for smaller cities…

  • Wow You guys have a good relationship with google. Wonder what you guys will team up on next. lol.

  • Fantastic service, Sony! I’ve been waiting for this for a while and you guys didn’t disappoint. Kudos!

  • Speaking of the relationship with Google, I have an simple equation for you.

    PlayStation 3 + Chrome = WIN.

    Got that?

  • The weather is nice, but not useful if it doesn’t give the forecast.

  • @252 (EvoAnubis):

    >> Sounds like a personal problem. Remote Play works fine for me. It even shows a PSP instead of a DS3 during start-up when it shows you the controls. Don’t know why it won’t work for you……and really don’t care ’cause your entire post was whining and complaining about something being taken away that actually wasn’t. <<

    Maybe YOU don’t care, and maybe YOU think it’s whining, but I’m describing an actual problem that I am seeing on my PSP during Remote Play with the new Folding@Home program.

    When I am in Remote Play and click the “X” button over the new Folding@Home icon (v0.90, installed today), I get the following message:

    “This content cannot be used during remote play.”

    So my complaint about something being taken away is valid.

    Please describe for me exactly what you see when your PSP is in Remote Play and you click on the new Folding@Home icon (v0.90). Then maybe I can figure out if I’m doing something different than you are, or perhaps you are doing something different than I am.

  • @ Razorbak..

    Ok now I see you updated your PSP to the new version, BUT…have you updated your PS3 to the 1.0 version yet ?

    Not sure, but seems you’re running a new version on your PSP and still have the old Folding at your own home on the PS3….

    I’m pretty sure your PS3 needs the 1.0 Life and Folding update for your PSP to connect now, but I may be wrong.

  • I don’t know what made me think of this suddenly but I wonder how well an RSS feed would work within LWP. We have one just for PS news, but I think it would be pretty nice/cool to be able to customize RSS feeds. I imagine there are some legal areas that would need to be dealt with but at the same time, services like Viigo for the Blackberry have an option to customize your RSS feed. Just point to the website or the feed itself and there it is (I actually have the PSBlog as a Feed on my Blackberry..heh) But I think being able to customize the news you receive would be an interesting addition, No?

  • I need some help plz!!!

    !!!

    Everytime I open Life or F@H it keeps saying ‘Could not connect to the server’ what can be done? HALP!

  • @267 (kpspraydad):

    >> Answer:

    Yes it can.
    Video:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT4QBoibVts <<

    Thanks for posting that video. I really appreciate it, because it helps diagnose the problem on my machine, and I am sincerely pleased to hear that it is working for you and other PSP users. Quite frankly, that is what I expected to see when the new LwP program was installed.

    Unfortunately, I noticed two specific things that are different between the system in that video (presumably your system) and the one I have: (1) My PSP is a PSP Slim, the 2000 model; (2) After I “upgraded” the F@H program, I did not get a “Life with Playstation” interface screen or icon, I only got a “Folding@Home” interface screen, just like the one I had before, but with today listed for the installation date. And when I press the “X” button over that icon, I get the following message, quoted exactly from my PSP’s remote play screen: “This content cannot be used during remote play.”

  • @Razorbak86

    Pardon me for jumping in here – but it sounds like you have an incomplete load of LwP.

    Here’s how mine updated. When I started my old F@H, it downloaded an upgrade, then exited. At this point, I still had a F@H icon on my XMB.

    When I re-launched F@H, it then started *another* upgrade/download. This was 126 MB or so. When this completed, and exited, my F@H icon on my XMB was gone, and a LwP icon was in its place.

    I did this on the console. If you were trying this via RemotePlay, I could imagine that not all of these steps would complete.

    Hope this helps.

    Cheers,
    Paul

  • @280…

    Um…the server is down…YOU can’t do anything except wait 5 minutes…it’ll come back.

  • Viigo integration on the PS3 and PSP would be sick

  • @281

    Addendum: It works fine on Remote Play with my PS3 and PSP.

    Cheers,
    Paul

  • Downloaded this this morning. Played around with it, quit to the XMB and my PS3 stopped reading discs. Just got off the phone with Sony who is sending me a coffin.

    /sad panda

  • @ 282

    Is it?
    thing is that I haven’t been able to connect to F@H for a good while now, I’m wondering wtf’s up?

  • It’s all good in the neighborhood, but it’d be nice if there were information of more states, like weather and news for all states, I mean the Wii has this, when there’s news it’ll show up, if there’s not important news, then it won’t, but at least it shows the weather in most places. This is what it needs.

  • @279 & 283

    In fact, Viigo is also a free services so I don’t see this being a difficult move either. Free = happy.

  • Also for the weather:

    More locations or even better be able to type in a location(city,state or zip code) for the weather, forecast, maps, and more detailed info like UV index, chance of precipitation, high tide(if near the ocean). If you’re getting the weather info from weatherchannel, why not just pull the info(forecasts, etc.) right from their web site.

  • As has been said numerous times. This is very very nice but will eventually need to be enhanced to provide true local weather. This should include various forcasts formats, and the ability to set your city. As far as the Cities listed on the map, they need to either add more or add an option so you can set a feed for your news locale which would add a dot on the globe that is more exact.

  • It’d be nice if you guys could support RSS, in the stand-alone browser, or even let us use Google Reader. You do that and put real flash support and you have yourself a winner.

  • @277: It doesn’t work for you. It works for me and everyone else I know who’ve tried it. That’s the textbook definition of a personal problem.

    When I’m on remote play and click on LwP, it doesn’t say anything. It just starts it. Sorry it’s not working for you. Maybe it requires having started it on the PS3 itself the first time or something; I don’t know.

    Simple fact of the matter is it’s a personal problem. Namely, your personal problem.

    I really wish I could help, but I have no clue why it isn’t working except for my previous speculation.

  • Nice, update…

    However still hoping for:

    Video Store (Canada)
    Flash Player Update
    Mandatory Trophies/Soundtracks

    the ps3 would then be perfection.

  • Ah……I think I just nailed it. You probably can’t update F@H to LwP through remote play.

  • By the way if you want only Folding@home to start up when you’re starting Life With Playstation then:

    Go with triangle button to “configuration”, go to “auto start” and click it on “folding@home”, maybe not the next time you’ll open up Life With Playstation, but at least after that you’ll get folding@home as soon as you start up LWP.

  • @282 (Weaselbot):

    Thanks for jumping in. :)

    Yes, I was doing this entire installation via Remote Play, since I am stuck in a hotel on a business trip, hundreds of miles away from home.

    Here’s specifically what happened during the installation process… Just like you, when I started my old F@H, it also downloaded an upgrade and then exited. At this point, I also still had a F@H icon on my XMB.

    But when I tried to re-launched F@H via Remote Play, I didn’t get another upgrade/download option… all I got was an error message, specifically: “This content cannot be used during remote play.”

    I guess this was set-up so that you cannot complete the entire installation using Remote Play, so it looks like I’m going to have to wait until I get home to regain access to F@H functionality.

    I gotta admit, this is a little bizarre, because I normally download programs, demos, and videos all the time using Remote Play, and I’ve never had a problem doing an installation using Remote Play. :(

    But it’s good to know that it’s working remotely for some people and hopefully will be for me too eventually.

    Anyway, thanks again for your jumping it. That was very helpful!

  • Okay guys everything is a work in progress not just the PS3 it will take time and why are most of you complaining you didn’t take out the time to navigate through the new app most of what you want is added if you can’t figure it out ask and it will be yes or no.

  • See? Problem solved. See how that initial rant came off to me as asanine? If you’d simply said what happened instead of yelling and complaining at Sony, this could’ve been sorted out sooner.

  • @GGCAN its like we’re talking to a wall, only to one written full with posts :-D

  • @289 (EvoAnubis):

    Actually, the problem is NOT solved. Remote functionality of F@H is STILL not working for me. Contrary to you, I don’t see this as a “personal problem”. It’s more correctly diagnosed as an installation bug that still needs to be fixed. But you were right about one thing… your previous admission that you have no clue was a little more accurate than your initial diagnosis. ;P

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