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Thursday, August 19, 2010

Weather Widget

Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while. -Kin Hubbard

I recently found the coolest weather widget. It tells the time, temperature and location, and there is even a cute little picture that reflects the weather and time of day.
YoWindow.com
Forecast by NWS

I started out with just a small widget in my sidebar. It was 150 x 150, included the current time and temperature and you could just make out that there was a little landscape going on. If you clicked on it, it expanded to full-screen and lots more details about the weather were available. I showed it to LadyBug yesterday during a thunderstorm {we had more fun watching the rain on the widget than we did watching it out the window} and she thought it was so cool that she wanted to add one to her blog too. Her sidebar is wider {220 pixels} and I was just a little bit jealous because you could see the farmhouse in her widget. When I made the widget to include in this post at 430, I loved it so much that I decided I wanted a big one for my header {my motto is, after all, Go Big or Go Home!}. I love it because you can see the little farmhouse down the lane and there's room for all the features this little widget offers.

The best part about it is that it can be customized. You can make it just about any size you want. It automatically adjusts the picture so you can make it narrow and tall, or wide and short, or a nice, neat square. You can select the temperature in Fahrenheit, Celsius or Autodetect {I'm assuming that it somehow knows what scale you use and automatically displays it in the units of measurement you understand}. You can choose which city it displays, or if you're living in a super-secret location you can leave that part off. And you can display it in different languages. There was quite a list -- French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, just to name a few.

So, why am I so excited about the weather :raincloud: ? The conditions around us, the time and temperature, are things that we habitually and often unconsciously keep track of to keep our bearings throughout the day. At a glance, my little weather widget lets you see what time it is and what the weather is like where I am. It gives you a little window into my world and I guess it makes my little piece of virtual reality a little more real.

2 comments:

  1. This is AWESOME!! I put it on my family blog - and everyone likes it tons :)

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  2. Very cool! I may have to give it a try. :-)

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