Life with Playstation / Folding@Home update

[vazel]

Hopefully Home sparks a resurgence of 3D desktops again. I remember there used to be a few during the dotcom bubble. I always thought they were neat.

 

[-tkf-]

Life with playstation.

I like the newsfeed
The weather is "ok" but pretty much worthless, i would have expected a lot more.

It´s a nice screensaver with some use but i would have preferred more news, for example a RSS ticker (smooth please) with all the news stories scrolling at the bottom of the screen. I like how i get news from places i never hear news from.

Is the sat images "live" or are they just a cheat? A problem with them is that being in the night aread of the globe you can´t really see if they are close to your country. But alas, if it´s fake it doesn´t matter.

 

[patsu]

Hopefully Home sparks a resurgence of 3D desktops again. I remember there used to be a few during the dotcom bubble. I always thought they were neat.

My short answer is "Noooooo !". Microsoft Bob was terrible (read: should not have released). Magic Cap tanked.

3D world metaphor is not as effective compared to abstract UI. It's also too rigid (because many was forced to adhere to law of physics). Playstation Home is ok because it falls in the entertainment and casual usage space (like Google Lively, SecondLife, HabboHotel, etc.). I am sure Sony has to evolve the initial Home concept further. In fact, I am more keen on the 2D Home UI than the 3D one. But that's just me.

Home is nice because it can blend many concepts and use cases naturally together. It is also agnostic to different online gaming/party models (Yay, XML Game Launching). Other than that, the meat is really third party content/applications and traffic/community.

Let's get some user activities going ! (including user-generated ones).

Life with playstation.

I like the newsfeed
The weather is "ok" but pretty much worthless, i would have expected a lot more.

It´s a nice screensaver with some use but i would have preferred more news, for example a RSS ticker (smooth please) with all the news stories scrolling at the bottom of the screen. I like how i get news from places i never hear news from.

Is the sat images "live" or are they just a cheat? A problem with them is that being in the night aread of the globe you can´t really see if they are close to your country. But alas, if it´s fake it doesn´t matter.

Yes, all the suggestions on more news and sources are definitely welcomed. Specifically, I would like to know: events, entertainment and food stuff in various locations.

Would like to see weather for my specific locations (Not just the predefined 60 cities).




When you have time, please add the XMB Google search to Life with Playstation. The Google search in XMB is practically useless without a proper context (Why would I turn on my PS3 to Google ?). With Life or Home, the search takes on a new purpose.
Also would like to see traffic condition in another channel or pop-up.


EDIT: In fact, this app would be useful for PSP too (using RemotePlay or a separate app). Good to know it's RemotePlay-enabled today at least.

 

[deepbrown]

The only flaw I see in your logic is that you're intentionally trying to start something with deepbrown, unless you two have a history.

I havne't been able to update, but it doesn't seem something too enticing, I will probably check it out, but who knows how long I'll use it.

Slider and me are actually married...

This could be a first for Sony. After the mistaken placing of Life on the network recently they said it would be up "soon". I guess they weren't wrong.

Gonna check it out and I'll give impressions.

Cheers.

EDIT: First impression. Annoying that you have to do two separate updates. Bah. I'm sure deepbrown will point out some flaw in my logic though.

EDIT 2: Needs more channels. Very nice presentation though. Shame the "more news" option then brings up a web page rather than presenting it within Life. I like it though depending on the depth of articles and the areas/regions covered I could see myself using this a lot. Good stuff.

Was annoying...but I guess that's the last time we have to update two different products, as they are now integrated. Wifey

 

[slider]

Oh you, silly.

Lucky for the rest of you that my first three versions of a reply didn't pass the taste test.

Before I get told off back to being on topic.

This is a great way for a global picture; stories that I wouldn't necessarily search for or stumble across. And perhaps you could have people from your friends list highlighted approximately on the globe. Surely that'd make you feel some affinity? After all, in my mind at least, these networks are all about community.

As an example of the "global news feed" feel I can see this having the potential to provide... earlier on whilst Life was focused on somewhere in the USA a news story about a phone-con between Obama and Uribe was highlighted. As I might be moving to Columbia for work in the future it was great. But it also made me curiously view a number of other cities.

I'm sure to those who are old hands at the internet this sort of thing isn't that impressive. But it impressed me!

 

[patsu]

Yes, the experience is rather intriguing. I suspect Playstation Home would bring similar feelings.

Now some hard core LwP info:

* Press release: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...information-service-goes-live-worldwide-today

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™), 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.

It sounds like LwP is built for bigger things. The current F@H and News channels are just a beginning.



* And then on the F@H side (You can see this if you choose "About" from within LwP Folding channel):
http://folding.typepad.com/news/2008/09/life-with-playstation.html

They have improved the folding engine so that it's on par with the GPU2 engine now.

We've also updated the science code to do the same functionality of what the GPU2 code can do today. However, people will notice that the ns/day will go significantly down. We want to stress that the points per day remains the same. This means that one gets more points/ns since the calculation is more complex, so don't worry too much if your ns/day is lower. LWP takes up a little extra compute time from the science, but not much. Most of the decrease in ns/day is due to the fact that it's doing a much more complex calculation (which is good for the science side of this).

Some people have noticed that LWP seems slower. In particular, the ns/day count is down, but that's not what it might seem. We're doing more complex science which runs slower on the PS3, so that's responsible for most of the slow down you're seeing.

For those who are interested, it's slower because we're running a more complex version of the GB implicit solvent, which is much more computationally demanding; the upside is that this would be much more accurate. This is also the main solvent model we're running on GPU2 right now. In fact, earlier PS3 results pointed us to the significance and importance of moving to this new model, so this (and GPU2) reflects what we've learned so far.

However, there is a small performance hit due to all the other life with Playstation (LWP) eye candy. However, it's not very big in the end (the Cell and RSX GPU are very powerful), with most of the slow down in terms of ns/day coming from the new science code. The upshot of the LWP platform will hopefully be getting a lot more PS3 donors (but I guess time will tell there).

 

[Nesh]

......and live camera images (partially provided by The Earth Television Network) of nearly 60 cities around the globe........

How do you watch that? Or is this just the tiny image that appears at each city location?

 

[patsu]

Yeah I think it's just the thumbnail photo that identifies the city.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

LwP version 1.1

* Added support for adding and removing channels dynamically.
* Added a local time display in the LIVE CHANNEL.
* Updated Mood categories for automatic music selection.
* Added support to enable Folding@home™ Expert Mode which disables all other channels and features that may impact simulation performance. Folding@home™ Expert Mode can be activated by navigating to: Options Menu > [Configuration] > [Folding@home].

There is a new channel and reports of folding speed increase as well.

 

[patsu]

wth is the United Village ? Did Frontier International, Inc buy an ad space from Sony ?

There is nothing in the new channel except rather dry information about schools spread sparsely around the world.

Contrary to their copywriting in United Village, there is no sense of community just by watching a few photos that I can't relate to.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

I felt it. I guess everyone's experience will differ. I learned more about places I knew and appreciated 1 or 2 places I knew nothing of. I wish there were a lot more places with information on them, though.

 

[upnorthsox]

Seems to be a bug with this version, it's skipping every other song. The new channel could be nice once it gets more populated but as of now it's too sparce.

 

[patsu]

From user perspective, the United Village is very similar to the original Live Channel but worse. In Live Channel, I get hourly news update around the world. In United Village, I only have static web pages about some charity organization. The site information seems to stay the same (Unless Frontier International is going to update their website every hour).

There is no story or currency about the information in United Village. I don't even see the "real-time" PS3 users around the globe. Why can't they just add the school info to Live Channel ? If more content is forthcoming, why can't they add it to Live Channel (since it will also clutter United Village) ?

Sony can most certainly enhance the current 5 bullet point summary of each "Live" city to accommodate the United Village school summary format. Both of them pop-up web pages to show more details anyway.

It looks like the United Village is an exclusive channel given to Frontier International for branding purposes. It serves very little purpose otherwise. The entire Life with Playstation concept is very one-way. Why can't I interact with the PS3 users on the globe ? I'd rather talk to the other PS3 owners in some geographical area, or shout out to them (like pushing Twitter in an opt-in fashion).

EDIT: I remember there are 11 level of parental controls on PS3. Can't Sony allow level 11 users to talk amongst themselves (even if it's forum posts in reaction to some Live Channel/UnitedVillage content) ? I am willing to take occasion user abuse to fool around with some genuinely fun ones.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Life with Playstation has got a new channel recently.
It's showing photographs of UNESCO's World Heritage locations (apparently photographed with Sony's Alpha DSLR's)
http://www.sony.net/united/clock/lwp/about/index2.html

 

[patsu]

Yeah, I saw it a couple of days ago while demoing PS3 to a friend. We noticed there is no heritage site in America and Africa (Wrong !). It looks like a sponsored channel by the Sony camera division.

 

[-tkf-]

Life with Playstation has got a new channel recently.
It's showing photographs of UNESCO's World Heritage locations (apparently photographed with Sony's Alpha DSLR's)
http://www.sony.net/united/clock/lwp/about/index2.html

Sony makes some very nice high end DSLR´s, if they had the canon lens range i would be tempted.

 

[patsu]

Life with Playstation updated to 1.2. Added an additional game channel for showing videos/trailers:

Seriously, it'd be more fun to tie the SingStar Viewer videos, and other user generated content to the "Life with Playstation" screen saver. Heck, they can even bring XMB friends list, PS Home activities, and FaceBook to the screen saver.

EDIT: And it should show me where to buy organic food in US using the globe.

 

[upnorthsox]

Life with Playstation updated to 1.2. Added an additional game channel for showing videos/trailers:

Seriously, it'd be more fun to tie the SingStar Viewer videos, and other user generated content to the "Life with Playstation" screen saver. Heck, they can even bring XMB friends list, and FaceBook to the screen saver.

EDIT: And it should show me where to buy organic food in US using the globe.

Friends list channel yes, Facebook channel why not, Organic food channel............I don't know, Beers of the world channel hell yea!

 

[deathindustrial]

Seriously, it'd be more fun to tie the SingStar Viewer videos, and other user generated content to the "Life with Playstation" screen saver.

Perhaps veering off-optic but I would be happy if they would just let us use the dynamic themes as a screen saver. The $3 I spent on the Afrika theme seems like a waste since I can't change the lame icons without losing the background and there is no way to view it independently of the XMB. And a big wet raspberry for the huge "Afrika" logo and Sony copyright marring the screen.

I cannot help but feeling that the same folks that make the UI decisions for products with 2 x 24 LCD displays are deciding what we get with the PS3 GUI and built in apps.

For example, why not embed a user configurable RSS feeder into Life with Playstation? Presumably they have all the code sitting around for their existing feeds and this could be trivially combined with a GEOIP database to map it to the globe. At the very least they should let users enter their own weather locations (or pull them from the profile data).

This application also desperately needs to be optimized, the start up time is brutal and also requires user interaction to get by the "oh noes, don't turn me off!" prompt which means you are forced to sit and wait around after launching it.

=)

The new camera channel would be cool if you actually had any control over display times. As it is, the tiles are shown for far too short a time. It also sucks that the times are shown without dates or timezones which makes them pointless.

Cheers

 

[patsu]

Friends list channel yes, Facebook channel why not, Organic food channel............I don't know, Beers of the world channel hell yea!

Seconded ! I used to drive to Portland (14 hours away) with a bunch of friends to attend the International Beer Festivals. We even set up a store to sell stuff while we drank.

Organic food, beer, wine, environmental changes are all interesting themes to explore. Sony won't have the resources to do all of them. If only they give us high level languages and format to do our own channels.

I like the new game trailer channels. I don't have time to sit down and try demoes. So seeing some of the very interesting trailers flash in front of me automatically is very convenient. They may get stale soon if they don't have enough new videos.

Playing a series of bad SingStar performances would probably fall flat. But they can use teh Cell to create and mix montages.

I also tried to put the video channel into the XMB background. I like how I can switch the video into foreground once something interests me. There might be a way to make it work even better (e.g., use more community content to avoid being framed as advertising whore). When in the background, the videos are a little too washed out for the moment.