Wii consoles everywhere had their slot glowing blue this morning with a message from Nintendo about an update for the Wii. With most of the changes related to the console's shopping channel, a few minor updates throughout the rest of the system seem to be well received at this point. Minor changes to the News and Weather channels show more information on the main Wii menu, and a clock has been added for those that may not have one handy elsewhere.

The Wii Shop channel saw the largest amount of changes, due in part to the fact that there are now over 100 titles available to be downloaded. It appears that you can no longer look through every title in one list, you must narrow down your search by a category. You can view games by the system they were originally released on, the genre, or even the publisher. For those that want to quickly find a game they know exists, a search has been added to find games by title. A quick search of "lol" returned The Adventures of LoLo almost immediately, making this method of searching the fastest by far. Another search option has been added that lists popular titles, those that have been downloaded the most by Wii owners. Mario titles take nearly every spot in the list, with Zelda games getting their fair share as well.

The News and Weather channels are now more useful, as previews of their content are visible from the main Wii menu. For the News channel, a couple top headlines scroll by. In full screen preview mode many more headlines are visible, although you cannot go directly to any of the stories you see. The Weather thumbnail now shows the current weather, but no temperature is displayed, making it only useful for those who don't have immediate access to a window.

A clock has been added to the Wii menu, but it has the old 7-segment display look that you see on most clock radios and digital watches. A little ugly, we can only hope it will be configurable in the future, and even removable for those that may prefer the old look.

Browsing the new Wii Shop channel, it's easy to see that some of the new categories haven't been ironed out. Capcom is listed twice under Publishers, with different games in each grouping, and for PinBall for the NES is listed under the Board Games genre. Since the listings are easily updated by Nintendo, we should see these problems corrected fairly soon. Although a fairly minor update, it's encouraging to see Nintendo dealing with the issues people are having, and responding to their ever growing Wii community.