Directional Pad

Nintendo launches the Forecast Channel, Opera coming Friday

After a delay which occurred for no apparent reason, Nintendo has launched the first of several add-on channels for the Wii. First up is the Forecast Channel, which has . . well . . weather. Rather than having it based on zip code, you pick your location from a list of states and cities (or, presumably, countries and cities if you're in foreign parts). Then you get a bunch of data, and can switch between today's weather, tomorrow's weather, a 5-day forecast, and a map view. The map view is really neat, because it features a Google-Earth-ish zoomable globe with satellite graphical data from NASA, which you spin around by grabbing and dragging the world with your Wiimote cursor.

It's neat, but if I really need weather data I'm going to look outside or mash .wz into IRC so I can lord my wonderful Florida weather over the rest of the DirectionalPad editorial staff. Someone might get some value out of it, but it's sorta useless for me. Now, if it provided radar data, then I'd probably use it. Unfortunately, that would require Effort on Nintendo's part, so I'm not holding my breath.

Oh, and here are some screenshots:

Also today, Opera announced that a trial of the Wii Browser will be out on Friday. Apparently the way this is going to work is there's going to be a "trial" version available for free from Friday until whenever the "full" version is out, some time in spring, at which point if you want to keep using it you'll have to cough up some Wii points. Conveniently, Friday is also my birthday, so thanks for the quality birthday present, Nintendo and Opera! We'll post some screenshots of the Wii Browser once it's out.

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