Web Talk

Now, this is a news that is gonna make a lot of people happy and others not. In fact it looks like people in Japan have got a new channel for their beloved Wii, called TV guide channel. This new channel lets Wii users:

• Surf through shows on the EP

• Share their favourite shows with friends

• See how popular a show is

• Receive an e-mail / SMS alert 30 minutes prior the start of a certian show

• Use their Wiimote as a remote control for their TV

We don’t know if this nice channel is going to hit the rest of the world. Well, in the meantime the only thing we can do is weeping!

If you live in Europe (but soon in the States too) you are going to enjoy the old, good Commodore 64 games that made you so happy when you were 15 years old, on your Wii virtual console. The guys at Nintendo will start with the classic game International Karate that will costs around 500 Wii point, and will continue with other arcades in the near future. Personally speaking I love Commodore 64 games, but spending some bucks on something you can find on the Internet for free, seems a little too exaggerated!

Do you remember the little Zelda Twilight Princess hack? Well, it looks like some people are using it to make Wii homebrew games that it is true, are nothing exceptional, but are showing what willing programmers will be able to do for our belowed Wii in a not-so-far-away-future! Watch the…Wiideo now!

PS: Wait a little bit if you don’t see the videos

One of the things I really like about my Nintendo DS is the big homebrew community that is always at work to create new applications to expand the way we use the little console. Today I want to speak about a little program I came across some months ago, and that I regularly use since then. It is called DS Weather report and, if you have a WiFi connection, lets you check the weather all over Europe (no USA sorry). The website is in french so I will try to write the most important feature here:

• Complete maps of all Europe
• Zoom in and zoom out
• More than 3300 cities in the database (and always more than 40000 cities available by code)
• Fast download time of weather information: a cache is used on a server, with a duration of one hour.
• Read along the cities temperatures and local weather the most important news available on Internet
• Touch screen features
• Lots of info available such as: temperature, humidity, wind, UV etc.

If you want to download the application click here. Remember, to use this homebrew application you have to own a slot such as R4. Read more about homebrew here.

Would you like to draw on the fly, while you are walking along the street or while you are doing something else? Do you wish to take quick sketches or write something fast without loosing any time to look for a block note or a piece of paper? Do you have a Nintendo DS? Wait a second! What the heck does Nintendo DS have to do with drawing? Well, actually it has to do more than you thought! As a matter of fact, thanks to a simple, small homebrew application, you can turn your little console into a notebook to write and draw whatever you like! The application is called DS Notes and of course it is freeware. Reading from the forum where it was posted:”DSNotes is an application for the Nintendo DS, designed to provide a way to quickly jot down and save notes or small sketches. The program has been designed for lightning-quick saving, browsing, and loading of notes (stored as black and white bitmaps, each only 6kb in size). You can check out the readme.txt for more info.” Download it now!

If you want to download the application click here. Remember, to use this homebrew application you have to own a slot such as R4. Read more about homebrew here.

This is a news I really want to report because, well, I am a big fan of Wii (I own one of it). I hope PS3 and Xbox guys are not feeling offended but, the guys at iSuppli are projecting that somewhere this year, Wii will overcome Xbox 360, becoming in this way the first console most sold in the world. The analysis puts the number of sold Wii over 30 millions compared to Xbox that anyway will manage to sell a considerable 26 millions, and PS3 that will reach around 25,7 millions. I am more than happy about this news and I hope we will see more consideration from the big game companies toward this little console, that only too often has been neglected. Wi is the real revolution that, thanks to its innovative way of playing and its cheap price, has totally changed the way people play with videogames. Kudos for Wii!

Ok, I really don’t buy this piece of news, but anyway I want to report it. Nintendo has just claimed to have lost $ 975 million dollars because of piracy in the 2007. Well, apart from the fact that this figure seems a little too exaggerate to me, I also think that, if on one hand piracy does exist, on the other hand it is relegated to a small portion of people. The hacking phenomenon is for some geeky guys that want to mod and hack their nice Wii or Ds. Majority of people is not into this kind of thing nor they do where to start from. Nintendo should think more about supplying large quantities of Wii and Ds to the stores (since there is a lot of shortage) instead of spreading these whining lies.

It looks like a new Wii hack is available in the wild. It allows you to break Wii protection thanks to a homebrew boatloader and Zelda! What follows is a video showing you how it works. Be aware, the video is just proof of concept and the hack, despite is already available, is not fully ready since it is reported to work funny on some American Zelda (RVL-RZDE-0A-2 USA).