Life with PlayStation 1.10 update adds United Village channel

by Andrew Yoon { May 11th 2009 at 12:45PM }

Have you booted up Life with PlayStation lately? Sony's enhanced Folding@Home application saw an update last week, upgrading the program to version 1.10:

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].

One of the new channels introduced to Life with PlayStation is United Village, "a project designed to provide an experience of sharing a sense of community and culture from locations around the world." Right now, it's a bit sparse, and we don't really see its potential. Hopefully, the fact that channels can be "dynamically" added suggests more channels are on their way.

[Thanks, zKAPOWz and Gotoxy!]

Tags: life-with-playstation, united-village

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

BigC3 @ May 11th 2009 1:07PM

Haha, this has been out for a few days at least - i guess the Joystiq crew don't visit Life with Playstation often :p

Andrew Yoon @ May 11th 2009 1:09PM

Actually, the debug units at work don't have Life With PlayStation.

BigC3 @ May 11th 2009 1:17PM

My mistake :)

stormtrooper190 @ May 11th 2009 1:21PM

i wich there would be more countrys offering news on it.

j.howlett @ May 11th 2009 1:40PM

it's been awhile since i've used it and folded. i'm always playing a game, in home, watching something, or just surfing the net. maybe i'll try to remember use it more before the really hot electricity using months.

Devin @ May 11th 2009 2:03PM

I personally don't use it, but its fun to show friends once in a while. I wish they had more cities (for news that matters to me) and more live video footage or pictures of what cities looked like when I chose them.

Officer Obody @ May 11th 2009 2:20PM

United Village is actually pretty cool, u get to see different classrooms from around the world and get to read a little background about each location.

McStagger88 (PSN) @ May 11th 2009 2:54PM

they REALLY should add the ability to input your own city and have news feeds and weather. also, add a 5 day forecast while your at it. and traffic alerts too.

the platform has a lot of potential to provide a lot of relevant information.

Havana @ May 11th 2009 2:52PM

This sounds like a prelude to an E3 announcement.

Rowdehaj @ May 11th 2009 3:18PM

With the economic crisis and all, and the (in some cases verging on compulsive) tendency to try and conserve energy currently, I personally find it difficult to justify leaving my PS3 on at night for no real reason. I understand that it's helping medical science in some ways, but how much has the PS3-fueled effort really helped so far compared to other computer systems connected to the FOLDING@Home network and, perhaps more importantly, how long will it be before the currently network computers become so much more advanced than the PS3 base as to render them obsolete?

We're all very happy and proud with our black shiny 'supercomputers', but it shouldn't stand in the way of practicality, at least, in my opinion.

Devin @ May 11th 2009 3:25PM

Rowdehaj @ May 11th 2009 3:27PM

Wow. I should proof-read my comments. I r comma whore. :B

Havana @ May 11th 2009 4:08PM

If you look at the statistics via the Life with Playstation (go to current channel (folding at home) - Information - OS Statistics) you can see that the PS3 it appears to be the 3rd highest OS (787526 total CPU's) that is sending in Folding@Home data. I think that's pretty impressive.

Jon Acheson @ May 11th 2009 3:43PM

My PS3 spends way more time folding than it ever will in Home.

butlersp @ May 11th 2009 7:41PM

I agree with McStagger88. Adding my own zip codes and RSS feeds (whether they are video or not) should be an option by now. Also adding the option of radio station feeds would be nice per location too. This would require the web browser to be updated. I am interested by the adding channels portion of the update. The United Village channel is nothing special. Now if there is a Google Earth type channel coming that would be nice.

A side possibility with the adding of channels could turn into the Sony version of Facebook. Who knows. Everyone gets a channel. Much like Home and Second Life.

ProgHead @ May 11th 2009 9:32PM

I was one step away of connecting my black box to folding @ home, but then I actually read the text before signing up to know what it was all about, and there were some parts that I didn't liked very much, mainly the fact that if something bad happens to my ps3 while its being used for their "experiments" they or sony are not accounted to anything. I mean, theoretically, some person other than me fucks up, and I wouldnt get another ps3 for it? sounds like a bad deal for me, or maybe I got it wrong.