Yahoo Widget Engine - Japan Related Widget Round Up

The Yahoo Widget Engine used to be Konfabulator, and I recently reinstalled it on my laptop, in a moment of boredom. I’m glad I did as there are now a whole bunch of widgets related to Japan.

The engine essentially allows you to run small programs on your desktop, things like clocks, weather reports, notepads and the like, in a highly versatile, user configurable way. It works on Windows and on Macs. Crikey.(Learn more at the Yahoo Widget Engine Homepage.)

Some widgets are far more interesting than clocks. Or weather reports. Or even notepads.

Anyone who’s ever been to Japan will know that the trains play music to warn passengers that the doors are closing. This music changes from trainline to trainline, and there’s a widget that lets you hear random selections from across Japan. Some of them are very entertaining, although the widget controls aren’t as intuitive as they could be. Link.

Another fun widget pulls images from a selection of webcams trained on good ol’ Mount Fuji, who has a fresh dusting of snow again after last night’s surprise storm, which has mercifully passed. Link.

On an educational tip, you can download a widget to help you with your hiragana stroke order (Link) and your katakana stroke order (Link). Maybe I can finally get around to learning the difference between tsu (ツ) and shi (シ).
There’s also a widget - Jenerator - to aid you with your kanji. (Link.)
The best thing about these widgets is that they can be set to be visible above all windows, and then neatly positioned somewhere they won’t get in the way too much, so you can garner some new nihongo knowledge while pottering around the interweb. Result.

Quick link to Japan related widgets’ search results page.
Quick link to Japanese related widgets’ search results page.

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