Significance of web widgets
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English4today is an on-line source worth a look
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Widgets relevant to one’s area can be found by scanning the widget repositories or galleries such as Widgetbox and Widigipedia.
This edition of NetSpeak discusses the significance of web widgets in the teaching/learning realm and introduces a few of them.
A small application to accomplish a specific task is called a widget. As discussed in the past ( http://www.hindu.com/biz/2007/04/30/sto ries /2007043000361500. htm), a web widget (a widget specific to an on-line service), is a code snippet that can be placed on a web page for accessing the widget’s parent service directly from it.
A plethora of teaching/learning services/resources is available on the Net and on-line learners face the risk of being inundated with content.
One possible measure to tame this information explosion is to weave a web page with content relevant to one’s requirement (especially with widgets pertaining to a specific subject).
As widgets can be copied easily from one site to the other, a page with topic-specific widgets assumes more significance.
As most on-line services offer widgets, the task of assembling a start page with widgets becomes easier. E-bay widgets (http://togo.ebay.com/), Jobsearch widget ( http://www.simplyhired.com/a/tools/home) offered by the job search en gine
SimplyHired and widgets from Newsweek ( http://www.newsweek.com/id/ 124426) are a few examples. Let us now discuss a collection of web widgets that facilitate language learning/teaching.
English4today is an on-line source worth a look in case you wish to improve your English language skills.
To help the user access its services directly from his/her web page, this service offers a couple of widgets ( http://www.english4today.com/free_content.cfm).
On-line dictionary
To facilitate accessing its services, the on-line dictionary service, ‘TheFreeDictionary’, offers several widgets ( http://www.thefreedictionary.com/lookup.htm#sitecontent).
Widgets for ‘Word of the day’, word match up game and the like are some of the notable ones. Dictionary.com’s ‘word of the day’ widget is yet another similar one worth a mention.
Lingro’s Tinydictionary widget (http://lingro.com/docs/webmaster-tools.html) that lets you translate words directly from your web page is another widget worth a look.
Yet another widget relevant to language learning is the one from Learnit ( http://www.learnitlists.com/). Each day, the service presents ten new words in the language you selected for learning. Along with each of these words, a corresponding word in your language is also displayed.
Another notable service, accessible from this widget, is the ‘Write’ tool that helps you translate a phrase in one language (say, English) to another (say, Hindi).
Babylon ( http://www.babylon.com/) is a dictionary/translation service that provides translation in more than 25 languages. This service also offers a widget for embedding on your site (http://dictionary.babylon. com/tools).
If you are still unable to comprehend Widgets, take a look at the demo page (http://knowledgecaps.com/widgets.htm) created by this author with a few widgets discussed here.
Widget directories
Apart from the ones mentioned here, lots and lots of widgets are in place. Widgets relevant to one’s area can be found by scanning the widget repositories or galleries such as Widgetbox ( http://www.widgetbox.com/), Widigipedia ( http://www.widgipedia.com/), Widgadget (http://en.widgadget.com/en), Widgia (http://widgia.com/), Widgiland ( http://www.widgiland.com/) Labpixies ( http://www.labpixies.com/) and Google gadget.
Google’s book widget
While referring or commenting on a book, if a blogger could make the on-line version of it also available (partly or fully), readers would immensely benefit. Google’s Book Search service’s (http://books.google.com/) recently introduced book browsing widget allows one to do this (http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2008/09/book-search-everywhere-with-new.html). By just pasting a few lines of HTML codes on a web page, one can embed a book from the Google’s book search index.
To generate the code to embed a book on your site, you may use the application ‘Preview Wizard’ available here: http://code.google.com/apis /books/docs/preview-wizard. html.
When we print a web page in the usual manner, lots of unwanted things (like advertisements and pictures ) creep in the output. The free on-line service ‘Print What You like’ ( http://www.printwhatyoulike.com/) can be used to eliminate such irritants. To use the service, just enter the address of the page to be printed on its input box; immediately the service loads the web page with a set of editing tools. With these tools, you can remove/isolate unwanted elements and print the rest.
Inquotes
Wish to find the quotes by popular politicians on a specific issue or subject (like India, nuclear energy and the like)?
Take a look at Inquotes, a new service from Google (http://labs.google.com/inquotes/. The service allows you to obtain quotes by speakers from countries such as India, the U.S. and the U.K.
Music search engine
Those of you who love music may find this link (http://altsearchengines.com/2008/08/09/the-top-10-indian-music-search-engines) that lists out links to several Indian Music search engines useful. Tools for PC administration Erase: A tool to delete files/folders. When you erase a file with Windows delete command, it will not get erased completely.
Unless all the locations in which the file was stored get overwritten, traces of it can still be recovered.
To completely erase a file from its storage you need enlist some special secured deletion tools.
The free open-source software, Erase (http://sourceforge.net/projects/eraser/) is one such file delete tool worth a try.
J. MURALI
He can be contacted at: jmurali@gmail.com
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