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Google’s RSS Reader Now Wii-Compatible

Posted by Chris Pereira Categories: Internet, Nintendo, Wii, Wireless

Nintendo wiimoteGoogle Reader has always been a personal favorite of mine among online RSS readers. It’s light, is a part of your Google account, and works well – can’t really ask more than that. While porn and gaming sites have been quick to implement Wii-friendly versions of their sites in order to garner more traffic, Google has now done the same with their RSS reader.

4 Color Rebellion found the page, which has an adjusted resolution and improved functionality for the Wiimote. As Google says, “Google Reader can take advantage of the buttons on your Wiimote, letting you navigate easily from the comfort of your couch.” The controls are as follows:

  • up/down: scroll up/down
  • right/left: next/previous item
  • 1 button: show subscriptions
  • 2 button: show links

When showing subscriptions:

  • up/down: previous/next subscription
  • right: select current subscription
  • left: close
  • -/+: collapse/expand folder

The page can be found here. The number of reasons to actually move from the chair in front of you TV is dwindling.

Read More | Google Reader Wii via 4 Color Rebellion


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Wii Internet Channel Finally Ready

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Internet, Nintendo, Wii

Internet ChannelThose Wii owners with WiiConnect24 enabled probably woke to find their Wii slots glowing blue, their consoles fresh with a notification from Nintendo that the final version of the Wii Internet Channel was now ready. For those without the WiiConnect24 service enabled, the full browser is just a system update and a visit to the Wii Shop channel away. Those that have been playing with the Beta version will notice a few new things about the final version. A better manual zoom option has been added, for somewhat better navigation and readability. Users can now toggle or disable the toolbar that has haunted the bottom of the screen, so videos can take up more of the screen and the Flash-based gaming experience should be improved. Along those lines, general performance of the browser seems to be improved; some of the YouTube videos that used to give the browser problems seem to stream and zoom a lot more smoothly now. The browser still isn’t perfect – a lot of the rich media experiences on the web still aren’t supported, but for free this is an excellent option. The browser won’t be free forever, though – after June 30th the price jumps to 500 Wii Points. At $5.00, this is still a decent bargain for an alternative browsing option to a PC.

Nintendo’s full press release continues below.

Click to continue reading Wii Internet Channel Finally Ready


Final Opera For Wii Delayed

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Internet, Wii

Opera Browser It looks like Nintendo Wii owners will have to wait just a bit more for the final version of the Opera browser. According to GameSpot, Nintendo has announced that the browser, initially scheduled to be finalized in March, has been pushed back a few weeks to an April release. Nintendo claims that the extra time will be used to implement a number of changes including:

improved zoning and scrolling, a better zoomed font, quicker start-up times, faster access to favourites, the ability to erase the toolbar, and pre-set buttons for phrases like www and .com.

A toggle-able toolbar would help for viewing full-screen video and playing Flash-based games on the Wii, and the improvements to scrolling will help as well. With this announcement, it also looks like USB keyboard and mouse support is off the table; with the Wii-remote, this isn’t actually a huge deal, but would help with long input forms.

Read More | GameSpot

Wii Browser Trial Online Now

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Internet, Nintendo, Wii

Wii Browser Playfeed

The trial version of the Opera Browser for the Nintendo Wii is now available. The browser is available from the Wii Shop Channel, and as promised, currently costs 0 points. The browser takes up around 280 blocks of memory for the Wii and downloads within a minutes. Overall, the browsing experience on the Wii is fairly good; most websites work correctly, including AJAX sites like GMail and others. Flash support seems hit or miss, some sites work correctly and others say that the user needs to upgrade their Flash version. Hopefully the Flash engine will be updated by the time the browser fully releases this spring.

The web browser has a default view that scales web page output to fit the 480i/p screen, but users can zoom in to get a cleaner view of the page, and there is an alternate rendering mode to allow slightly better text rendering at the cost of re-organizing the page. Users can scroll up and down using the “B” trigger on the Wiimote, and the “A” button selects links. The virtual keyboard works surprisingly well, and the Wiimote does an excellent job of acting as a mouse. Overall, the experience appears to be vastly better than the portable browser released for the DS; one could actually do some light Internet browsing and e-mail on the Wii, something that is pretty painful for the DS.

 

Read More | Wii.com

Opera Wii Free Worldwide Until July 2007

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, Internet, Nintendo, Wii

Opera WiiOpera Software announced that gamers with Nintendo’s Wii console will be able to download the Opera Browser from the “Wii Shop Channel” for free until July 2007. After this point, the browser will be available for a currently undetermined amount of Wii points. Opera also confirmed that Flash and AJAX support would be included in the browser, allowing gamers access to many of the client-based applications developed for the world wide web. Opera’s press release implies that the browser will be available at launch, but this would obviously also be dependent on the availability of Nintendo’s “Wii Shop Channel.”

The full press release continues below.

Click to continue reading Opera Wii Free Worldwide Until July 2007


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