Shown here is a snippet of the woot! homepage. I enjoy this little widget particularly because of the way excerpts from the forums are prefixed. The human readability of “[user] would like to know…”, “[user] reports back…”, and “[user] had some troubles with a…” is significant.
Go organic with your Web application’s verbiage, especially in areas where users are likely to be in a hurry. “About two days ago” as a timestamp is wildly more helpful than “53 hours ago” or “2-1-2010 6:00 PM”. While it’s no replacement, widgets and primary listings are great places to use a more natural language.
And tomorrow, when I check my schedule and see my next meeting is in “about 3 hours”, I’ll remember. When I am in a hurry I can throw “[blah blah] 7pm tomorrow” at my calender app and it will just work. It feels comfortable, and it encourages smooth interaction.