You know how the saying goes: all work and no play makes Android a dull boy. Or something to that effect. The point is that in addition to loading up your device with a selection of useful apps from our Android Starter Kit, we want you to have some good distractions for waiting rooms, commutes, and just general silliness. To that end, we've picked out five fun, free Android games to help you pass time.

Now, if you took a look at that list and asked yourself "but why-oh-why did Angry Birds did not make the cut?", we have an answer for you. For this roundup, we wanted to focus on some games that many of you might not have come across before, and that game has been done to death. Any self-respecting gadget-hound who hasn't heard of it already needs to take an excursion from that rock s/he has been hiding under.

All that being said, Angry Birds: Seasons is a seriously awesome game. Play it. Now.

What are your favorite games for the Android OS? No need for you to restrict yourselves to the free options--let loose in the comments below.

Originally posted at Android Atlas

Today Opera Software announced that it's laying the groundwork to get its widgets platform onto its Android browsers. In lieu of extensions as employed by Mozilla Firefox, Opera uses widgets, small applications that run within the browser to perform tasks like showing the weather or a calculator.

From the development perspective, Opera's release of a widget runtime lets developers start creating these widgets for Android phones. It's alpha software, so consumers shouldn't start looking for these widgets yet.

Opera's widget runtime for Android uses a mobile application specification put forth by the WAC (Wholesale Applications Community), an alliance of carriers and cell phone manufacturers like Verizon and Samsung. Opera claims it's the first to use the WAC spec for this runtime purpose.

Read more on Opera's blog.

Originally posted at Android Atlas