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Blogging Made Better

Quick! What do live ducks, the Today Show, Nascar Standings, Al Jazeera, a planimeter and a small red ant have in common? Can't guess? Well, would it help if I added a few more links to the chain? How about space probes,Donkey Kong, tire size conversions, a planimeter and an anime podcast?

Ah, now you have it, right? They've all been made into widgets that you can download and use on your desktop or in blogs or web pages.In case you've been watching "Lost" reruns for the last two years and don't know what widgets are, they're blocks of code that are embedded within a web page, blog or onto a desktop. They produce content that isn't static. In other words, they do something.

So, if you had the Nascar widget, you could keep up with the latest Nascar standings on a minute to minute basis. If you had the live ducks widget, you'd save a lot of money on bread and would never have to go to the park again.

Widgets aren't just for fun. There are some serious widgets out there, widgets that solve problems and simplify our lives. For instance, say you're in London, sitting in your Hyde Park office, swotting away (English folk often swot) and you realize that you're supposed to be somewhere really important in a half hour. Do you panic? No, you just tickle your little "London Tube Status" widget and it tells you exactly what's happening Underground.