Scheduled maintenance is nothing new for the PlayStation Network, so you should know the drill. Thursday from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Pacific (that's 11 a.m. Thursday to 2 a.m. Friday Eastern and 4 p.m. Thursday to 8 a.m. Friday BST), PlayStation will be tweaking the PSN.
During this time, you won't be able to access the PlayStation Store or PlayStation Home and you won't be able to screw around with Account Management. The silver lining: online play and online apps will still work "provided that you have signed into the network within 5 days prior to the start of the maintenance period," according to the PlayStation Blog.