What happens now is that the PS3 continues to fold in the background of this application. Apparently the graphics synthesizer is just sitting around twiddling its thumbs while the Cell tries to solve Alzheimer's, so they have given it something to do. The old Folding app has become a back-end for this new suite of services. I say "suite" because, as of launch, it's only one other mode; but this has obviously designed with expansion in mind. More on that in a bit.

It appears like the old Earth 3D globe from Folding, but now has a nifty realtime cloudcover overlay, which would have been great for watching Ike's progress last week (see above) had they shipped this app before today. Oh well, next time. The IP lights of the various worldwide folders are gone from this view, and replaced with major city labels. Each city has current weather conditions, a live camera view, and Google News headlines for that area. You can click through the headlines to launch an in-line browser window of that story. So this is basically a very fancy pseudo-RSS newsreader with several pieces of flair.

You can also choose custom music to listen to while you browse (or let it do the "around the world tour", BBC-style). The built-in music is straight from Polyphony digital; i.e. slightly absurd Japanese elevator muzak, which comes in an assortment of "moods". Needless to say, I recommend you import your own songs.

Holding down square will allow you to cycle between the old Folding "channel" (as in, view) and the new Live one. There are currently only the two channels in this menu, which is why I mentioned earlier that we can expect several more channels to land within this thing in the future.

LwP is pretty much a high-def, slightly more functional version of the Wii planet weather service, except with the whole fighting-cancer-in-the-background thing. As both a map and world news freak, honestly, I will probably use this a lot. It's just so very nouveaux 21st century.

(The current webcam view of Toronto they're using sucks, though. I volunteer my new balcony view for service.)

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