They tried to make me go to Wiihab….

There appears to be no stopping the juggernaut that is the Nintendo Wii – gaming machine, fitness machine, training machine for surgeons and now….rehab machine. The Wii’s popularity continues to extend at a scorching pace with its latest accolade being in the field of rehab therapy for patients recovering from stokes, broken bones surgery and even combat injuries.

According to the experts, some traditional therapy exercises can be repetitive dull and painful. Playing on the Wii engrosses the patient to the point where they can become totally oblivious to the exercise they are actually doing while playing.

Dr Osborn of Southern Illinois Healthcare, one of the hospitals using the Wii as part of its rehab therapy said. "In the Wii system, because it's kind of a game format, it does create this kind of inner competitiveness. Even though you may be boxing or playing tennis against some figure on the screen, it's amazing how many of our patients want to beat their opponent …. When people can refocus their attention from the tediousness of the physical task, oftentimes they do much better."

MyTake – Score for the Wii, the world is clearly loving this machine. When it launched it had its critics and while it’s not a giant leap forward, I’d say it’s probably a giant leap side wards in thinking – its taken gaming in a whole new direction and this is what innovation is about. There’s something ever so slightly fitting in the fact you wave the wiimote around like a wand…… something magical you might say.

Corey might be on a good Wiki-t after all

He just refuses to go away – and why should he? In age where celebs are made at the click of the finger, or in this case a mouse, it’s probably only right that he make the most of his 15 minutes of fame. This time, it’s the Wikipedia story that has returned again and he looks set to finally get that page he and his fans obviously really, really, like…er…want and stuff.

The debate ignited once again when another page was set up for Corey and although it was nominated for deletion, Coreyites rallied behind their hat-dwelling leader to keep the site up with the votes 13-9 in his favour. According to one fan: "He's notable according to media all over the world (and has) 245 hits on Google News as Corey Delaney and 171 for Corey Worthington," another user clearly against the idea said "Once again it is time that Wikipedia decided if it is an encyclopaedia or merely a recorder of mildly amusing but ultimately trivial events,"

MyTake – Why can’t an encyclopaedia contain mildly amusing but trivial events? In fact, I am fairly certain that it does…. A quick look at an online dictionary gives us the following: “a reference work containing articles on various topics dealing with the entire range of human knowledge”. Now, it might not be pleasant knowledge or fruitful knowledge, but it is knowledge.

Wii T in your home

Hugely respected as a director and as a producer, Steven Spielberg now brings us another Wii-son to get into gaming with the release of BOOM BLOX, a game he developed in partnership with EA's Casual Entertainment Label for the Wii platform.



Spielberg said - "I am a gamer myself, and I really wanted to create a video game that I could play with my kids,"


"BOOM BLOX features an enormous amount of fun challenges and cool scenarios for your kids to solve or for you to master together."


Check out http://www.boomblox.ea.com/


MyTake - Gaming is good and gaming with your kids is even better. Spielberg’s involvement in developing a game follows similar moves by Peter Jackson, of Lord of the Rings fame, who is developing for the Xbox 360 platform. Gaming is another way of storytelling, offering a different canvas and some would say a more challenging one. When names like Jackson and Spielberg are getting involved it's a huge validation for the industry.

Anyone for a nice bold adds?

The best innovators in the world are kids without agenda, and while this might not be an world changing innovation, it's an interesting direction. Basically, a new language is being developed using the predictive text system. Have you ever been texting a mate to see if they want to go for a beer and ending asking "You up for an adds?" - happens to me more than I'd care to admit. Well, phone addicted kids are putting a new twist on this by relacing key words within a sentence to the first alternative that comes up on the predictive text, which results in what is essentially a new language -

"R U cycle? Book! Fancy an adds down the sub? There's a gr8 new carnage" actually means "R U awake, Fancy a beer down the pub? There's a gr8 new barmaid"

My Take - you wont stop the children of the revolution, no you won't.....well, you could take there phones away. In all seriousness, it's great to see a generation define itself through expression and this generation has done this more than most. Which goes back to my first point about innovation - it's going to be great to see what they do to global business in 10 years time.

The Book beats the Space in Aus

Alright - so I'm a bit late posting on this.  But the news is that it's all about the book and not the space.  What I mean is that Aussies prefer Facebook to MySpace, at least that's what a new survey commissioned by B&T says.  According to the results, 23 per cent of respondents favored Facebook compared to just 11.5 per cent for MySpace, while YouTube came in with 11.5 per cent and Bebo at 2.6 per cent.  Perhaps the more interesting figure from the study is that over 40 per cent of respondents stated that they didn't visit any social networking sites - which basically means there's a hell of a lot of room for growth.  

My Take - Facebook has struck a chord with users offering them a unique blend of functionality, flexibility, privacy and....fun. Build it and they will come, put on a party, and they'll stay.   

Let it be.....heard in space

When the Beatles wrote Across the Universe, I wonder if they thought that someday, someone would take that literarily. To mark NASA's 50th anniversary, the Beatles classic, Across the Universe, will be the first song ever to be directly beamed into space. The song will be beamed out via the Deep Space Network and will be aimed at the North Star, Polaris - 431 light-years from Earth. Sir Paul gave the project two thumbs up sending the following message to the boys at NASA: "Well done, Nasa," he added. "Send my love to the aliens. All the best, Paul."

My Take - I don't think we're going to see any major scientific breakthroughs here, but hey, it's a pretty cool thing to do. And who knows, maybe the Deep Space Network will become the universe's first social network - we share Beatles music and someone sends us back the secret of immortality.

SkypeStationPortable

News from Sony is that the new firmware update for the PSP will allow gamers to make a receive Skype calls from the thier PSPs. Apparently, it only works on the new slim PSP and won't work with the first generation due to hardware differences in the meemory.

To take advatage of this added function, all you need to do is get the firmware upgrade, register for Skype talk and away you go!

My Take - The Sony boys are a smart bunch, years ago they got involved in a number of disctint and separate areas of consumer technology and slowly but surely they integrate them. Building this functionality into the PSP is another step towards a unified digital offering - the way of the future I reckon