PlayStation 3 gets weather, Google News, and other Web goodies
The latest PlayStation system software update includes a new application that's chock full of Web goodness.
Sony's PlayStation 3 got a small update early Thursday morning that added a new channel called Life with PlayStation. It merges news feeds, weather forecasts, and live Web cams on a giant world map.
It's an evolution on the Folding@Home application, the protein-folding scientific project that's gotten a hefty processing boost from worldwide PlayStation 3 owners who run the small application when not using their systems to play games or watch movies.
What makes the service neat is that it figures out where you are and automatically jumps to that point when you start it up. The news feeds are pulled in from Google News, while the weather reports are served up in real time via the Weather Channel. As you move around the globe, both the news and weather changes by city, and both are continuously updated throughout the day.
A similar offering was provided by Nintendo for its Wii system back in January of 2007 with both its News and Forecast channels, however in the U.S. the stories were limited to those from the Associated Press, unlike Sony's offering which pulls them in from all over the Web.
Noam Rimon, Sony Entertainment of America's senior development manager of R&D, provides a walk through the updated service in the video below.
