Ok, ok, I’ll admit it, i’m not writing this on a Wii, but only because, well, the keyboard is kinda like the iPhone keyboard; it’s fine for typing a little bit (like a URL or a tweet) but not ‘War and Peace’. The wii’s opera browser also reminds me of the iPhone and it’s browser, It can load pretty much anything, with some exceptions. The Wii DOES have Flash, but only Flash 7 due to licencing issues with adobe. YouTube still works though, even though they claim to use Flash 8. The one thing that the Wii’s browser lacks that the Mobile Safari browser has is Quicktime, so, unfortunatly, no listening to TWiT, or watching *ahem* everybodys favorite video podcast on the Wii. The coolest new thing is a special javascript SDK for the wii that let’s you write AJAX apps that get the tilt/position of the wiimote(s), take advantage of the Wii’s built in 3D graphics, and draw good lookin’ menus and such. Overall it works really well and looks good.

So, what about the built in email client that I mentioned? I’m not just talking about online stuff like Gmail. I’m talking about a special feature of the Wii message board thing, where it tells you about Wii updates, your daily play time, and messages from games. Here’s where it gets cool, every wii has it’s own automatically-generated email address, emails sent there from ‘approved’ addresses will show up in the Wii message board. So, alls ya got ta do is approve your gmail address, and then set it to forward incoming emails to the Wii. So now, whenever a new message comes in, the Wii blinks, I turn it on, go to the message board, and the new message is ‘pinned’ cork board style with an orange pin (signifying that it’s new), you click it and it elegantly pops up. Composing messages is a little harder, but, like, why would you want to on that keyboard?

There are also a lot of smaller, yet still cool ‘channels’. Mom loves the photo channel because it makes it SUPER SUPER easy to show slideshows of all the family photos to us (and any guests), and even tweak the colors, and, if she where so inclined, draw a mustache on everybody. The weather channel (no, not that one) is really neat because not only will it give you the current conditions and forecast for your area, it’ll give you the current conditions from everywhere in the world on a really cool 3D globe that you can spin with the Wiimote. The news chanel is simmilar, with stacks of news appearing on top of the city they came from on a cool 3D globe. And then there are the Mii related channels and stuff, which are just fun.

And finally, what the Wii was made for, the games. The selection at this point, even more than a year in, is, to say the least, weak. I think there are maybe 5 or 6 games that I’d actually pay $50 for, and I already own 4 of them. What I like is that most of them are pretty new, creative, not just another shoot-em-up (more than can be said for any other console except for the DS, gotta love nintendo). My newest game is Super Mario Galaxy, which is, well, really fun. Something that really suprised me about it is it’s graphics, a huge improvement over the cartoony Wii Sports, they’re not like PS3 good, but they’re detailed, and, well, ok, pretty. A whole bunch of good games are going to be released in the next few months (Super Smash Bros Brawl, Mario Kart, etc…), which will really make it a great gaming machine.

Overall, best $250 my, umm, parents ever spent. If you see one in Wall Mart or something, grab it ’cause it won’t be there much longer, these things are selling BETTER than hotcakes.