For website owners and bloggers, there is a new widget from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that will keep web pages right on time.

Web “widgets” are small application programs designed to be run inside web pages. The NIST time widget, created by engineer Andrew Novick, can be used on any web page. “The widget code tells your browser to go out and grab NIST time content and post it to your page,” Novick explains. “It synchronizes with NIST’s atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado, every 10 minutes, thereby guaranteeing its accuracy.” The widget checks the viewer’s computer to determine which time zone it should display as the default.

NIST is the nation’s official civilian timekeeper (its military counterpart is the U.S. Naval Observatory), and its clocks contribute to the international time system, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

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