Wii News Channel

Nintendo release the Wii News Channel today and I must say – it rocks!

I won’t be using the Wii News Channel to get my news, but as a tool to teach children geography and what is going on in their world, this is fantastic.

First off, the news channels presents news like any other RSS aggregator. You get a list of categories, Sports, International, etc. Selecting one of those gets you a list of articles. Nothing new here.

However, little Apple-esque touches are apparent. The letters of the text fly into position, vs just a straight cut to the text. Pressing +- zooms the text in and out, with the same letter to position animation. Very slick.

Then you notice on the right its showing a map with the city of the news story blinking. If you click on the map, it zooms out to a world globe, with icons for every article in the database! They pile up based on locale, and as you zoom out from Earth, the areas congregate into larger piles, named “Tokyo Area”

Using the Wiimote, you can rotate and tilt the globe, noticing some news from Beijing. Click on the news icon, or press + to zoom in. You’ll either get the article, or a list of articles if there were more than one in the pile.

Wiimoting to the bottom of the screen pops up controls, such as Back, and with these simple controls you can navigate the entire planet looking for news.

A very fascinating application and best of all, Nintendo has released it for free.

The text is very clean with component cables and by using +- you can zoom in making the text very large and easy to read.

Gotta love Nintendo.