Last week, just in time for Halloween, the development team behind Wolfram Alpha, the computational knowledge engine developed by British-born physicist and Mathematica creator Stephen Wolfram, put the spotlight on the Candy Nutrition widget, a widget that lets you check out nutrition information for common Halloween candies, including Snickers, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Twizzlers, Butterfingers, and Hershey’s Milk Chocolate.

Now that Halloween has come and gone everyone’s attention (especially the retailers’) has switched over on the upcoming holidays. Wolfram Alpha is focusing on the upcoming holidays as well – by putting the spotlight on another useful widget.

The new widget the Wolfram Alpha team announced is called Holiday Countdown Calculator. As its name so adequately points out, it does a fairly simple job – it tells you how many days are until Thanksgiving, Chanukkah, Al-Hijra, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s Eve. It is incredibly easy to use this widget. You just select one of the aforementioned holidays, click the question mark (?), and the widget tells you how many days there are left until you can celebrate that holiday.

Widgets, just in case you do not already know this, are mini-apps built on top of Wolfram Alpha queries, apps that can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, or via email. Widgets can also be embedded on blogs or websites. You can embed the Holiday Countdown Calculator widget on your personal website or on your blog, or you can create personal widgets that include your favorite holidays or your private events.

“Wolfram|Alpha Widgets are just one more way you can share some holiday cheer on your blog and with your social networks,” said the Wolfram Alpha team. “What holiday or special day are you counting down to?”

If you would like to get started with the Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine, just click here.
If you would like to check out the Holiday Countdown Calculator widget, just click here.