The Wii News channel debuted this past Friday, January 26th, and Wii owners now have access to headline news from the comfort of their gaming console. News on a gaming console? Are they serious? Toothpick the Ferret takes a look at this new feature of Nintendo's platform.
I'm an admitted Nintendo fanboy, going back to the old days of the Game & Watch, when I was a wee young ferret holed up in Iwakuni, Japan (pun intended). But even I was thinking, "Headline news on my Wii? Why bother? I've got a laptop and a high-speed internet connection to however many news sources I feel like accessing. What's the point?" The point is user interface, boys and girls.
The Wii News Channel is like a lot of news sites, in that it has categories like International News, Arts and Entertainment, Sports, etc., you get the idea. You click on a category and you get the list of news items for that category. So far nothing new. However, once you click on an article, you do get a nice interface. Click on the picture and it expands so you can get a better look at it. Scrolling is easy, easier, in fact, that using the mouse. Don't believe me? Try it. I didn't believe it either, so I tried it a few times, wondering if it was the "new toy feeling" or if it was really easier. The latter proved to be true in my case. Also, it's easy to change the font size. Click the plus or minus button and you get instant font resizing. It's pretty cool how it does it, too.
Okay, that doesn't really do it for you? Well, if you happen to select an article that has a map location (yes, it's the same world globe from the Forecast Channel), you can click on the map. And when you do you can then navigate the globe in the same way you can in the Forecast channel. What does this do? It allows you to see the number of news items per region. As you zoom in or out, or as you turn the globe or move around, the interface automatically organizes the stories accordingly. For instance, if you are zoomed at pretty far, you may see 19 news item stories around New York. However, as you zoom in, you'll start to see them break out to more granular locations like Yonkers. Pretty cool. And as you rotate the globe, it'll reorganize the stories so that as you get close to an edge of a region, it regroups so you can still have access to said stories. Click on the stories and you get the list of all stories pertaining to that region. That's a nice new feature that's not found in any online news service I've seen to date.
And that brings me to slideshow mode. It's exactly what you think it is. Only it makes reading through stories much, much easier. Click on slide show mode for a category or region and you're hit with the first story headline. Want to move on? Click to the right and the next story headline comes up. Went too fast and missed a story? Click to the left. If you want to read a story based on the headline, click the A. It pops up and then you have your normal navigational capabilities. Done with a story? Click A again and you're back in slide show. This means it's easy and very fast to read the stories you're interested in. Much faster than clicking a link, clicking back, and clicking a link again.
Why is it much faster? Part of the reason is the interface. The other part of the reason is the fact that the stories are being cached locally on the Wii. Which brings me to another feature. When you enter the News Channel, it tells you when it got its last update. Okay, so the Wii isn't going to beat the main news channels that will email you breaking news. However, you can assume a reasonable time period as to a refresh of the stories, and the fact that they are all local makes them fast and easy to read through.
Like I said, it's all about User Interface. Wii's News Channel isn't a tour-de-force bringing you something more than any other news outlet so far as news is concerned. Rather, it's about how it's presented. And I'll admit, it's a whole lot easier to sit on my couch using the News Channel via Wii then it is to sit on my couch with my laptop trying to surf the news sites. That ease of use gets my vote right there. I'm a ferret with limited time on my hands and they've made it easier and quicker for me. Outstanding!
Now, I will close with a few things I'd wish they'd add or fix. First, you can't get to the globe automatically. No option that I've seen, or at least, no intuitive one (remember, user interface). The second is if you are in slide show mode, the easiest way to get out of it is to get into a story and then click on the End button that shows up in the lower left-hand corner. You can't use your pointer in Slide Show mode while navigating through the headlines, which means no way to select End that way. A small annoyance, but one I can deal with. Still, that's something I shouldn't have to deal with. And no, clicking home isn't what I want, because I may just want to see another category, like Sports, and see if my man, George Steinbrenner, has done pulled off another big signing. *shrug* Still, these small annoyances don't compare with the improvements to the user interface that the Nintendo team has pulled off. Mark me down as one impressed ferret.
The Wii News channel debuted this past Friday, January 26th, and Wii owners now have access to headline news from the comfort of their gaming console. News on a gaming console? Are they serious? Toothpick the Ferret takes a look at this new feature of Nintendo's platform.
