Penmachine

Yesterday, Nintendo released some software updates for the Wii that permit you to make reasonably full use of a USB keyboard to type stuff like URLs and text in the Opera-based Internet Channel browser and other places.

In fact, I'm using my old Apple Pro Keyboard on the Wii to type this right now, and it works pretty well. I needed an extension cable to reach the Wii (a wireless USB keyboard would be good), and I still need to use the Wiimote to click buttons. Plus there is no way to select or copy and paste text, as far as I can tell, which is annoying. But it works, and it's a lot better than pecking the onscreen keyboard with the Wiimote as I had to do before.

Ideally, Nintendo or someone else would come out with a wireless keyboard that includes some of the Wiimote features to make the process work better, but for now it's an acceptable experience.

It would be even better with an LCD HDTV instead of our old CRT unit, but if I want to browse the Web for real, I really should use one of our computers anyway. At the moment, browsing Flickr and Facebook works well enough that it is no longer painful. Good job, Nintendo.

Labels: games, geekery, nintendo, usb, web, wii