Let's leave PlayStation Home aside for a minute, and ask how good PS3 is for accessing other Web 2.0 sites and services. See, if you're going to be using Sony's console for a fair amount of web browsing, you'll want to use some of the whizzy Web 2.0 sites around. Think YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, Gmail and so on.

With that in mind, I've picked out 15 of the more popular ones, and tested them out on PS3's web browser. It mirrors a post I did last week for the Opera browser on Nintendo's Wii. Read on to see how PS3 fares, with sites scoring 2 points if they work well, 1 point if they work partially, and a big fat 0 points if they don't work properly (or at all).

But before starting, it's worth stressing that the fault doesn't always lie with the PS3 browser. Sometimes it's the sites that aren't PS3-friendly, not the other way around.

eBay (www.ebay.com)
You already know that eBay is a useful source of cheap(er) PS3 games, but how does it work on the console’s browser? Very well. The site doesn’t fit on the screen, but it’s easy to zoom round using the Sixaxis’ right analog stick. Searching for items and bidding on them works just like it does on a PC or Mac. 2 points.

Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk)
I’m starting off with easy sites here: like eBay, Amazon is mainly text and pics, so shouldn’t present the PS3 with any problems. Nor does it. Browsing books, checking out related links, and accessing your secure account info is easy as pie. 2 points.

MySpace (www.myspace.com)
The planet’s largest social networking site is well matched to PS3’s demographic, so you’d expect it to work properly. Browsing profiles and editing your own is no problem, although I don’t go in for the whizzy extras, so can’t tell how they’d work. It does ask you regularly if you want to run plug-ins embedded on the pages, which is a bit irritating. Unfortunately, when I tried to access a band profile to listen to their embedded tunes, it didn’t work – and this is one of the core features of MySpace. 1 point.

Bebo (www.bebo.com)
The younger, more thrusting MySpace benefits from the fact that you can play songs embedded on band profiles, as well as doing all the editing and friend-adding you want. In that sense, it works better than MySpace. However, don’t expect to be watching videos for now - they need Flash 8 installed, which the PS3 browser doesn’t currently have. 2 points.

Facebook (www.facebook.com)
The last social network I’m looking at is Facebook, which is the one with most buzz at the moment. You have to click on four separate alerts to get into the site, but once there it works fine. Adding friends and updating your profile is a cinch, and the site’s clean stripped-down design looks good on a TV screen. With less of a focus on music and video, PS3 handles Facebook with ease. 2 points.

YouTube (www.youtube.com)
The largest video-sharing site works like a dream for watching videos, letting you goggle to your heart’s content. I found uploading videos more problematic, but I think that’s because PS3 doesn’t support the .MOV videos my camera takes, so doesn’t recognise them. YouTube seemed to be giving me the option to upload files from the PS3’s hard drive or a memory card, though. 2 points.

Flickr (www.flickr.com)
The Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site is slick on a computer, and on PS3 it works fine too. After signing in, I tried to upload a photo, and although it took quite a while – I hadn't resized the original file, so it was quite big – it worked. Being able to plug in your digital camera to PS3 is good, but being able to then upload pics to Flickr is awesome. Even if it did splutter when I tried to rotate one. 2 points.

Vox (www.vox.com)
You really will need a wireless keyboard if you’re planning to use this blogging service with your PS3. You’ll also need lots of patience – when I tried it, the site was very slow to load each page (and I checked on the Mac just after, where it was working fine), and you can’t add photos to posts. Not good, and although you can browse your friends’ Vox pages, you really want to be able to post. 1 point.

Gmail (www.gmail.com)
Google’s webmail service looks good on the PS3 browser, and is excellent for checking your emails. However, like the Wii, it’s got an annoying habit of pasting all the text of the email you’re replying to into the text entry box, which is a nightmare to scroll back through. Although you can turn this option off within Gmail, if you’re going to be using it on PC/Macs as well, it’s annoying. 1 point.

Twitter (www.twitter.com)
The hot new Web 2.0 buzz service right now – for more info, see our brother blog Twitterati. It’s based around posting pithy 140-character messages, which is more bearable using the PS3’s on-screen keyboard. The site is simple, so it works fine on PS3. You can post ‘tweets’ and follow your friends’ feeds from one screen. 2 points.

Bloglines (www.bloglines.com)
If you’re an RSS-head, Bloglines is one of the easier ways to keep track of your feeds online. Unfortunately, you can’t actually open any of your feeds, rendering it useless. Bah. 0 points.

Digg (www.digg.com)
Tech news aggregation site that’s normally slick to use. However, the formatting is well and truly screwed up when you access it using the PS3 browser, with sidebars at the top, then stories squeezed into a narrow column on the left, further down. You can still read them and Digg the ones you like. 1 point.

del.icio.us (www.del.icio.us)
The most popular social bookmarking site, which means you can save your favourite links, tag them, and then see what other people are storing too. Browsing your saved links and other peoples' is no problem, but you won't be able to add your own for now, as the service requires web browser plug-ins. 1 point.

Google Maps (maps.google.co.uk)
Slick mapping service that gets you from A to B, via a peek at satellite photography of C. Sadly, it's busted on the PS3 browser, not letting you search for streets and postcodes via the search box, while the zooming tool for maps is shoved in the middle of the screen, indicating layout issues that are stopping the site from working. 0 points.

Last.fm (www.last.fm)
Online music recommendation service: you tell it what you like, and it generates personalised radio streams full of other tunes you might like. You can also sign up friends and browse their streams. It's a bit fecked on PS3, in that it didn't want to let me sign in, then when I clicked on the Music link, suddenly I was. The formatting's not good either, but I could play my personal radio streams, which is the main thing. 1 point.

CONCLUSION

Hmm, it's a mixed bag. PS3's browser struggles with some sites you'd think it'd be fine with, and there are some formatting issues with several sites tested here – again, someone with more technical knowledge would need to say if this is bad coding on the part of the web designers, or the fault of the browser itself. Much of the weirdness seemed to revolve around Javascript, incidentally.

However, the fact that you can upload content to sites like YouTube and Flickr is a big plus point, and if the technical snags with other sites can be solved, PS3's browser will be more than capable of handling the Web 2.0 world.

Came straight to this page? Visit www.pspsps.tv for all the latest news.