That is an example of how the horoscope widget would output your zodiac sign’s daily horoscope.

It’s written in the stars, as some people would say. As such, they’d like to know what their horoscopes are every single day! Oh boy, it’s not just enough to look at it from the newspaper. You just have to share it with everybody else who is reading your blog! It’s part of the fun and for some people, the paranoia that the stars are conspiring against you.

Patrick Chia has a plugin for those who would like such a thing on their blogs. This WordPress geek seems to have a lot of widgets on his projects page. Anyhow, the horoscope widget gets the daily horoscope from Evled.com’s horoscpe section.

Good things:
You could have a cute header text describing that section of your blog. You could have something like “Signs and wonders: A Gemini’s daily horoscope” or “Written in the stars for Aries” or even “Zodiac Crazy Scorpio.” Nice, right? It would be easy to fit in your blog’s overall look and feel.

You could easily just select your zodiac sign from the drop-down list when you customize it from the Presentation; Sidebar Arrangement; Widgets part of your blog. If you’re not certain what your zodiac sign is, there’s no need to worry. The dates are included in the list, just right beside the particular zodiac sign. Nifty huh?

The not so good things:
Wouldn’t it be better if there’s an image associated with the zodiac signs? In newspapers, it’s easy to find the zodiac signs because of the symbols included.
If you don’t like the source of the horoscopes, you can’t really change it unless you can tweak the widget itself so that you could have a different source.

Don’t you just love these widgets? Whether you’re a blogging newbie or a problogger, you sure could play around with them!

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Do you have a blog about pets? Or maybe you have another kind of blog but you love pets. If this is the case, then you might want to take a look at a widget that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has created for pet health and safety. Aptly (if not creatively) named the Pet Health & Safety Widget, the tool provides information for both the blog or web site owner and the readers. The information comes from the Center for Veterinary Medicine, so you know it’s legit and reliable.

From what I see in the FDA web site, the widget is pretty enough. It is narrow – the width of a small side bar – and long, perhaps a little more than 2 inches long. The code is provided, but it doesn’t seem as if there is a user interface to tweak the parameters of the widget. You can try to change the values for height and width, though – I think that will work.

The widget is mainly color blue, with various shades thrown in. There are two tabs – TIPS and UPDATES. There is also a small image which takes up most of the space of the widget, and there is a title (presumably for the article) at the bottom of the image. You can scroll left or right for more tips. I tried it out and there are only two topics available – purchasing pet drugs online and how to report pet food complaints. As to the frequency of updating, I have no idea.

Give it a try, grab the code from the FDA web site.

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