Sony's new 'Life with Playstation' News & Weather Software integrates the latest Folding@Home update

The latest upgrade to the Playstation 3 Folding@Home software will now be integrated into Sony's newly launched 'Life with PlayStation' News and Weather Software.

The new software will function as 'channels', two of which are available at present, one called 'Live' for the News & Weather related side, and of course 'Folding@Home' for viewing the current protein and detailed stats etc. Apparently plans are that new channels of various types will be added down the line.

The good thing about the integration aspect with Folding is that whenever someone uses Life with Playstation they are participating in Folding@Home project at the same time, as the folding process is always going on in the 'background'. So with the current draws of the cool News and Weather Globe, and the likelihood of more channels to be added later, the more participants we can likely add to the project.

If you notice that your folding performance (NS/day) has gone down, its simply because one of the updates has increased the complexity of the folding methods used on the PS3 and are now equal to those used in GPU2. This means better accuracy of scientific results. Folding points have been adjusted so that the PS3 client will still maintain a rough 900~1000 PPD.

Another addition to the folding side of things, is a 'Contribution Points' system (completely separate to the official Stanford stats) where every PS3 folder starts on a clean slate, and gradually builds points as per their contribution efforts. These new points will be linked to the current user's Playstation Network ID (PSN), so lookout for Lahmy88 & Lahm_Family on the leaderboard!

As Vijay Pande has on his blog, here is a video from lead Sony-side developer Noam Rimon explaining the functionality of the new program.