Nintendo's Wii controller is an interesting technology. One of the best things about it is that it connects with Bluetooth. Which, lucky for you, meaning you can connect it to a computer with bluetooth! Even if your computer did't come with Bluetooth connectivity, relatively cheap adapters can be purchased online or at your local computer store.

So, for this post I'm will show you how to use a Wiimote to play NES games. There is much more you can do with the Wiimote, but I think this is a perfect (and easy) use of it. So lets get started!

First you must get your Wiimote to Discovery. You do this by pressing 1 and 2 buttons. The blue light at the bottom of the Wiimote to blink. You may have to press the buttons until the Wiimote connects to your computer. Now on your computer, right click your Bluetooth icon and click Show Bluetooth Devices. If there is no Bluetooth icon in the taskbar, go to Control Panel and double-click Bluetooth Devices. Click Add when the window (see below) pops up.

In the window that appears, select This device is tuned and ready to be found, and click Next. Although it's searching, make sure your Wiimote's lights are still flashing! It should find the Wiimote for selecting's found, and click Next. Now select the Don't use a key, and click Next (but make sure the lights are still flashing!) Click Finish when it's done.

We'is already almost done! All you need is GlovePIE, a program that lets you actually use your Wiimote, you can download it here. Just unzip the contents of the zip into a new folder and run GlovePIE.

It may look daunting, but it's actually really easy. Just go to file and open and navigate to WiimoteScripts (included in zip), look for NESController.pie. Click on Run and your Wiimote to control the NES Emulators! I tested it with the default settings VirtuaNES and it worked great!

GlovePIE will be more scripts for you to try, so have fun with it! It's just a matter of time before we have any games on your computer to play with the Wiimote, but in the meantime, enjoy all the things GlovePIE already allows you to do!

Mono, an open source implementation of .NET runtime, is bringing Microsoft's development technologies to some unexpected places, including the iPhone, Android, and the Wii.

According to Novell's lead Mono developer, Miguel de Icaza, several applications in Apple's App Store are powered by Mono. This might come as a bit of a surprise to those familiar with Apple's highly restrictive application inclusion policies, because the company strictly prohibits developers from using interpreted languages and third-party runtime environments—a constraint that largely rules out technologies like .NET and Java.

Static compilation is the special sauce that makes it possible for Mono to run on the iPhone. Mono allows developers to use ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation, which converts .NET's common intermediate language (CIL) directly to native code at compile time. This means that the application doesn't have to use just-in-time (JIT) compilation to generate the native code at runtime.


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