Wii News Channel Launches: Video & Images
While many companies are promising the bring the Web 2.0 world to the living room, the only company I see doing it well so far is Nintendo. Yesterday I got my new Wii, just in time for the release of the Wii News Channel.
In case you aren't familiar with the Wii, in addition to gaming, it has a variety of "channels" that you can access for weather, shopping, web browsing, and now...news. The reason this is important is because the Wii is the first user interface/remote I've found that actually makes the television an effective tool for accessing information on your television. This is because while most devices require constant scrolling or clicking through menu after menu (thus a limited UI)...the Wii is true point and click. You simply point to the location on the screen you are interested in and click, drag, scroll, etc. Works like a stylus on steroids and is incredibly efficient.
The Wii News Channel is outstanding. It allows you to browse news by subject and headline, but also allows you to switch to a globe view and spin the globe to locate news headlines in other countries. The movement is fluid and controlled. You can easily zoom in and out of the global view. When reading a news story, it does a beautiful job of rendering text on the fly...especially when zooming the text in and out. The effect is so remarkable it makes you want to giggle. It is like a hybrid between Google Earth and Google News.
I'd love to know how Nintendo does this (call me).
Here are some photos and video:
View Headlines By Category
While reading a news story, the map location is shown to the right. Clicking on the map will take you to the globe view.
View of the Headlines in the United States. Zooming out will show the entire globe.
Global view of text. Grabbing the globe allows you to spin it.
This is also why I never go hiking, and notice the text is remarkably clear, especially on a LCD TV.
Video: I apologize for the lack of sound in this video, something went wrong during the file conversion. Try humming. I've been enjoying the new Shins album while making it. I recommend Red Rabbits.