As the subject says, is there any way to toggle the applets on the desktop, such as the web shortcut, on and off via an entry from the command line?

I'm hacking around trying to see if the web shortcut applet could be made just slightly more useful and while it's possible to update the image that's displayed, it doesn't take effect until the applet has been closed and then restarted. What I'd like is some way to quickly (and automatically via cron) close and reopen that applet, but I haven't found where the configuration controlling what applets are on or off yet.

I'm not aware of any special tool to do that, but you can manually edit /home/user/.osso/hildon-desktop/home.conf to enable and disable Home plugins (enable some plugins and see the file for syntax). Desktop/Home watches the file for changes, so any changes you make to the file will take effect in a few seconds.

Actually, I think it would be just easier to write a whole new applet/plugin for the purpose. It's not that many lines of code anyway.