Weather at Your Fingertips

Obviously, the weather is a big factor on how our commutes are going to be each day. What we need to bring and wear are key factors and the weather decides this. You can watch the Weather Channel or local news religiously, like some do. Or, if you have a computer at home and/or work, you can do what I do and use widgets!

What are widgets? Widgets are little tiny programs that run on your desktop at all times, and you can bring them up by hitting a button on your keyboard or moving your mouse to a corner of the screen, depending on the widgets you use. Two of the most widely used are those made by Yahoo and Apple. The Apple one is obviously only for use on Macs, but Yahoo has one that runs on both Windows and Mac PCs.

I use the Apple one at home and the Yahoo one on my work PC. The last couple versions of Apple's OS X 9 (Tiger and Panther) have Widgets functionality built in, all you have to do is go to the Apple website and download the widgets you want.

The Yahoo one requires an "engine" application that, once you load it on your PC, will run all your widgets for you. Go to their widget website and download the latest version (which is usually listed on the front page).

Now, the widget you're looking for (and it exists for both Apple and Yahoo) is the Weatherbug widget. I personally find this to be the most useful weather widget, though you can find others.

Apple: Weatherbug Local Weather

Yahoo: Weatherbug Local Weather

The ease and functionality of the Weatherbug widget is great and I think you'll find yourself using it more than the TV once you've gotten the hang of it. And Weatherbug is the weather content provider for Columbus's CBS station, 10TV. So you're not missing a thing by getting a Weatherbug widget and eschewing the tube.

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