Life with PlayStation

Last updated
Life with PlayStation
Life with playstation.jpg
DeveloperLife with PlayStation
Sony Computer Entertainment
Folding@Home Channel
Sony Computer Entertainment of America
Stanford University / Pande Group
Type Virtual globe
Virtual encyclopedia
News client
Distributed computing
Launch dateSeptember 18, 2008
Platform(s) PlayStation 3
StatusDiscontinued [1]

Life with PlayStation was an online multimedia application for the PlayStation 3 video game console on the PlayStation Network. The application had four channels, all of which revolved around a virtual globe that displayed information according to the channel. The application also included a client for Folding@home, a distributed computing project aimed at disease research. As of November 2012 the service has been discontinued.

Contents

History

In August 2006, Stanford University in Silicon Valley, announced that a protein folding client would be available to run on the PS3. [2]

On December 19, 2007, Sony updated the Folding@home client to version 1.3. The update allowed users to run music stored on their hard drives while contributing to Folding@home and automatically shut down their console after existing simulation work was done. The software update also added the Generalized Born implicit solvent model, which broadened the PS3 client's computing capabilities. [3] [4]

On September 18, 2008 the PS3 version of the Folding@home client became Life With PlayStation. The application became available for the PS3 in March 2007 and became a channel on Life with PlayStation when it was released. This update also provided more advanced simulation of protein folding and a new ranking system. [5]

Following the release of system software version 4.30, the Folding@home PS3 client and all other services under Life with PlayStation were discontinued on November 6, 2012. [1] [6] Life with PlayStation was then removed from the XrossMediaBar for new users. [1]

Channels

The "Live Channel" showing weather forecasts and news headlines for New York City. Screenshot taken at approximately 8pm PST. LifeWithPlayStation Weather.jpg
The "Live Channel" showing weather forecasts and news headlines for New York City. Screenshot taken at approximately 8pm PST.

Life with PlayStation featured five channels which were updated frequently with new information. [7] The application provided the user with access to information "channels", the first of which was the Live Channel which offered news headlines and weather through a 3D globe. The user could rotate and zoom into any part of the world to access information provided by Google News and The Weather Channel, among other sources.

Live Channel

Live Channel was a news, time zone and weather feed, which provided users with information from Google News and The Weather Channel organized by city. The content included live camera feeds and cloud data, similar to Google Earth. Live Cameras was provided by earthTV and the Webcams.travel website. The application only supported certain cities of the world, with limited coverage, such as with the continent Africa, with only four cities covered by the Live Channel.

Folding@Home

The PlayStation 3's Life With PlayStation client displayed a 3-D animation of the protein being folded. LifeWithPlayStation Folding.jpg
The PlayStation 3's Life With PlayStation client displayed a 3-D animation of the protein being folded.

Life with PlayStation also hosted an application for Folding@home, a distributed computing project for disease research that simulated protein folding and other molecular dynamics. Users were able to contribute to the project by leaving their client to run Folding@home while not playing games. The application displayed a live rendering of the protein being folded and some statistical information in front of a virtual globe background.

PlayStation Network Game Trailers Channel

For users in the United States, the PSN game trailers channel allowed direct access to the streaming of the PlayStation Store's game trailers. It also allowed the ability to purchase titles from the store, without having to leave the application.

United Village

United Village, provided by its respective website, and hosted by Frontier International Inc., was a cultural documentary-like project that gathered stories, interviews and articles worldwide. It targeted rural stories from largely from developing countries with some rural parts of other countries. The contents of the channel include culture, development, education, social issues and tourism. The United Village channel was discontinued on March 30, 2011.

World Heritage

World Heritage, by α Clock, showed UNESCO-selected locations of special cultural or physical significance around the world. These World Heritage sites linked to their respective articles on Wikipedia. Each location included the introduction directly from the Wikipedia articles.

Features

In addition to the channels, the PlayStation 3's also featured photo slideshow viewing, music & video playback. Also Life with PlayStation had a virtual globe that was periodically updated from servers to ensure that cloud, weather, live camera feed and news update data were all up to date. All channels except for the Live Channel included a static representation of our planet Earth, while the Live Channel itself showed day and night time effects. Additionally, the Folding@home protein folding could be disabled.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PlayStation 3</span> Sonys third home video game console, part of the seventh generation

The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on November 11, 2006, in Japan, November 17, 2006, in North America, and March 23, 2007, in Europe and Australia. The PlayStation 3 competed primarily against Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yellow Dog Linux</span> Linux distribution

Yellow Dog Linux (YDL) is a discontinued free and open-source operating system for high-performance computing on multi-core processor computer architectures, focusing on GPU systems and computers using the POWER7 processor. The original developer was Terra Soft Solutions, which was acquired by Fixstars in October 2008. Yellow Dog Linux was first released in the spring of 1999 for Apple Macintosh PowerPC-based computers. The most recent version, Yellow Dog Linux 7, was released on August 6, 2012. Yellow Dog Linux lent its name to the popular YUM Linux software updater, derived from YDL's YUP and thus called Yellowdog Updater, Modified.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Folding@home</span> Distributed computing project simulating protein folding

Folding@home is a distributed computing project aimed to help scientists develop new therapeutics for a variety of diseases by the means of simulating protein dynamics. This includes the process of protein folding and the movements of proteins, and is reliant on simulations run on volunteers' personal computers. Folding@home is currently based at the University of Pennsylvania and led by Greg Bowman, a former student of Vijay Pande.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">XrossMediaBar</span> Interface used on the PlayStation 3 and other Sony products

The XrossMediaBar is a graphical user interface developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. The interface features icons that are spread horizontally across the screen. Navigation moves the icons, instead of a cursor. These icons are used as categories to organize the options available to the user. When an icon is selected on the horizontal bar, several more appear vertically, above and below it. They, in turn, are selectable by the up and down directions on a directional pad.

Various accessories for the PlayStation 3 video game console have been produced by Sony and third-party companies. These include controllers, audio and video input devices like microphones, video cameras, and cables for better sound and picture quality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wii Menu</span> System menu for the Wii

The Wii Menu is the graphical shell of the Wii and Wii U game console, as part of the Wii system software. It has four pages, each with a 4:3 grid, and each displaying the current time and date. Available applications, known as "channels", are displayed and can be navigated using the pointer capability of the Wii Remote. The grid is customizable; users can move channels among the menu's 48 customizable slots. By pressing the plus and minus buttons on the Wii Remote users can scroll across accessing empty slots.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PlayStation Home</span> Social gaming platform developed by London Studio

PlayStation Home was a virtual 3D social gaming platform developed by Sony Computer Entertainment's London Studio for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) on the PlayStation Network (PSN). It was accessible from the PS3's XrossMediaBar (XMB). Membership was free but required a PSN account. Upon installation, users could choose how much hard disk space they wished to reserve for Home. Development of the service began in early 2005 and it launched as an open beta on 11 December 2008. Home remained as a perpetual beta until its closure on 31 March 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PlayStation Eye</span> Digital camera device for the PlayStation 3

The PlayStation Eye is a digital camera device, similar to a webcam, for the PlayStation 3. The technology uses computer vision and gesture recognition to process images taken by the camera. This allows players to interact with games using motion and color detection as well as sound through its built-in microphone array. It is the successor to the EyeToy for the PlayStation 2, which was released in 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PlayStation 3 system software</span> System software for the PlayStation 3

The PlayStation 3 system software is the updatable firmware and operating system of the PlayStation 3. The base operating system used by Sony for the PlayStation 3 is a fork of both FreeBSD and NetBSD known internally as CellOS or GameOS. It uses XrossMediaBar as its graphical shell.

The seventh generation of home video game consoles began on November 22, 2005, with the release of Microsoft's Xbox 360 home console. This was followed by the release of Sony's PlayStation 3 on November 17, 2006, and Nintendo's Wii on November 19, 2006. Each new console introduced new technologies. The Xbox 360 offered games rendered natively at high-definition video (HD) resolutions, the PlayStation 3 offered HD movie playback via a built-in 3D Blu-ray Disc player, and the Wii focused on integrating controllers with movement sensors as well as joysticks. Some Wii controllers could be moved about to control in-game actions, which enabled players to simulate real-world actions through movement during gameplay. By this generation, video game consoles had become an important part of the global IT infrastructure; it is estimated that video game consoles represented 25% of the world's general-purpose computational power in 2007.

The PlayStation Portable system software is the official firmware for the PlayStation Portable (PSP). It uses the XrossMediaBar (XMB) as its user interface, similar to the PlayStation 3 console.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PlayTV</span> HDTV/DVR add-on unit for the PlayStation 3

PlayTV is an add-on unit for the PlayStation 3 video game console that allows it to act as a digital television receiver, and digital video recorder, using the DVB-T standard.

PlayStation is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, two handhelds, a media center, and a smartphone, as well as an online service and multiple magazines. The brand is produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a division of Sony.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PlayStation 3 cluster</span> Supercomputer platform

A PlayStation 3 cluster is a distributed system computer composed primarily of PlayStation 3 video game consoles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sky Go</span> Online television service

Sky Go is a streaming television service from Sky Group provided free for Sky TV subscribers in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It complements Sky TV by allowing subscribers to watch live and on demand Sky TV via an internet connection on the go. The Sky Go app is available on Windows and Mac computers and also on Android and iOS devices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PlayStation Vita</span> Handheld game console by Sony

The PlayStation Vita is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 17, 2011, and in North America, Europe, and other international territories beginning on February 22, 2012. The console is the successor to the PlayStation Portable, and a part of the PlayStation brand of gaming devices; as part of the eighth generation of video game consoles, it primarily competed with the Nintendo 3DS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nintendo 3DS system software</span> Operating system for the Nintendo 3DS

The Nintendo 3DS system software is a updatable operating system used for the Nintendo 3DS handheld system. The Nintendo Switch system software is believed to have evolved from the Nintendo 3DS operating system.

The PlayStation Vita system software is the official firmware and operating system for the PlayStation Vita and PlayStation TV video game consoles. It uses the LiveArea as its graphical shell. The system is built on a Unix-base which is derived from FreeBSD and NetBSD.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wii U system software</span> Operating system for Nintendos Wii U home video game console

The Wii U operating system is the official firmware version and system software for the Nintendo's Wii U home video game console. Nintendo maintains the Wii U's systemwide features and applications by offering system software updates via the Internet. Updates are optional to each console owner, but may be required in order to retain interoperability with Nintendo's online services. Each update is cumulative, including all changes from previous updates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PlayStation 4 system software</span> System software for the PlayStation 4

The PlayStation 4 system software is the updatable firmware and operating system of the PlayStation 4. The operating system is Orbis OS, based on FreeBSD 9.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Lempel, Eric (October 21, 2012). "PS3 System Software Update (v4.30)". PlayStation blog. Sony. Archived from the original on October 24, 2012. Retrieved October 21, 2012.
  2. Pande, Vijay (2006-10-22). "PS3 FAQ". Stanford University. Archived from the original on 2012-07-14. Retrieved 2006-11-13.
  3. "Folding@home for PLAYSTATION3 Version 1.2". Archived from the original on 2008-01-11. Retrieved 2007-12-31.
  4. Rimon, Noam (2007-12-18). "New Folding@home Features Coming" . Retrieved 2007-12-31.
  5. "Life With PlayStation out now". Kotaku.
  6. "Termination of Life with PlayStation". Life with PlayStation. Sony. November 6, 2012. Archived from the original on November 13, 2012. Retrieved November 8, 2012.
  7. "Channels". PlayStation.com. Archived from the original on January 25, 2010. Retrieved September 22, 2010.