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Wii Weather Channel Up, Browser Coming
Nintendo's console has been out almost exactly a month, and the company is now rolling out some of the system's additional features. As you are reading this, your Wii should already be capable of giving you the weather forecast. Additionally, this Friday a trial version of the web browser should become available. From the Pro-G article: "The fully featured Opera web browser for the Wii was intended to be available for the launch of the console. Sadly it wasn't, but the good news is that you'll only have to wait until Friday to get a taster of what it can do. A trial version of the Wii Opera web browser will be available for free from December 22. The final version of the Opera browser will be released at the end of March 2007 and will be free for all Wii owners until the end of June 2007. After this date, anyone who hasn't already downloaded the browser will have to pay 500 Wii Points."
Even for people who don't get their hands on a Wii until later next year, $5 is a bargain for Opera. It's a great browser and a great price seeing all the extra considerations and functionality that has to be programmed in to work well on the Wii at 480i/p. I remember spending more than that on a copy before they went free.
My only question is, how is Nintendo going to block users from playing emulated games via the web? That could seriously hurt Virtual Console game sales if someone can figures out all the logistics behind getting the remote to work correctly through the web browser.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Although it doesn't make up for the lack of USB keyboard support, the Wii has a 'predictive' function when writing memos. If you click on the icon that looks like the eject button on the right it will turn on this feature.
After writing a few letters it will suggest a few words that you may then click on to use.
Chewie does not get a medal. Come on, George. Can a Wookie get a medal?
The one thing that I found useful, is that when you first click on the Forecast Channel it gives you the current conditions outside... even before you click "Start" to actually launch the full blown channel.
I think this might be handy... just for quickly checking the temp in the morning while I'm getting ready.
I wish they would build in a small dashboard or something on the Channels menu itself... where it could have a rolling ticker displaying the current weather and the forecast so that you don't have to actually launch the forecast channel itself unless you want detailed information or info on another city....
Friedmud
Ok, ignoring the fact that none of that is built in, or supported by MS; When did XBMC get a browser? (or as you put it youtube support?) I remember it being able to download trailers from Apple, the weather hookup, emulators, and shoutcast, but no browser. Can you elaborate more?