The Internet Channel for the Wii, powered by Opera, has arrived.

I started writing this post with it, but after the title and the first sentence, I realized it would take forever. Typing short things with the on-screen keyboard and the Wiimote is fine, but I wasn’t about to start making links and everything else with it.

I really like that I can watch Flash videos with it. So far I’ve tried YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe and DailyMotion. I wasn’t able to view YouTube and Metacafe videos directly from those sites, but was able to see them embedded in other sites (like the one in this post), probably due to some JavaScript issue. With Google Video and Daily Motion I was able to search and view directly from the sites. I hope this can be fixed either on the video site’s end or through future Internet Channel updates. It is a beta trial, after all. Also, some of the longer vids started stuttering a bit. I wasn’t sure if this was due to memory issues with the Wii or my wireless connection to the system.

Flash games also worked, but were a bit spotty. WiiCade, a site that apparently began collecting Flash games that would work well with the Wii before the Internet Channel was released, lists some games that work well, such as the classic Curve Ball, but many others don’t seem to load quite right.

Moving away from the Flash, I was surprised at how well Google Maps worked. It will be nice to get directions from the TV when I’ve already got my laptop in my bag. The Weather Channel also worked like a charm, but I suppose we don’t need that as much now that we have the Forecast Channel on the Wii.

Text heavy sites are a bit hard to read, but you can zoom in and out using the + and - buttons on the Wiimote. Button 2 also lets you change the display mode so that the page content takes up the entire screen. Seems like this uses the same type of tricks that mobile phone browsers use to make content readable on smaller screens, such as disabling existing text styles. There really should be more button shortcuts, though. The d-pad isn’t used for anything and would have been perfect for something like scrolling to the bottom of a page or the top.

This thing really needs to support wireless keyboards, although I image Nintendo will released something that connects to the Wiimote like the Classic Controller does. Would have been nice if I could use my cheap $20 USB keyboard in the meantime, though.

I foresee the internets being deluged with posts and comments proclaiming, “I posted with with my Wii!!!!!”