What's the deal with these widgets?

As a reader of The Free Press Web site, you might notice we have created some "rolling marquees" for our blogs.

They're also known as widgets, and can even be downloaded to your own Web site.

We borrowed the idea from a sister paper in North Andover, Mass., just outside of Boston, but the tool itself, can be found at a free site called "widgetbox.com"

We wanted to dress up our blogs and get them more prominent play on the Web site. So now, they're easy to find and they're easy to read. The widgets update as soon as a new blog posting is filed.

They're broken down into two main categories of blogs: Free Press sports blogs that include blogs on baseball, hockey, fishing and fitness and The Free Press variety blogs that include blogs on entertainment, education, campus life and the blog you are reading as well as a blog from Free Press photographers John Cross and Pat Christman writing about their craft.

You can still look up blogs by individual writers by going to our "blogs" link at the top menu bar of our homepage.

We're also using our scrolling widget tool to provide a national news feed that is automatically updated any time big news breaks. It's from Google news but contains dispatches from The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and even Fox News.

The scrolling widgets have already driven our blog traffic through the roof with great readership.

It's just another innovation to make our Web site reader friendly.