Word Clouds as Works of Art

Bufkinite@evpl — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:51:00 GMT

Noodling around on the web is great fun because in doing so, I sometimes find things that I end up being amazed by, but would otherwise never have thought interesting. The web site wordle.net is one such example. You can enter any text into it - love letters, web pages, emails, anything! - and it will create a word cloud which gives greater prominence to words appearing more frequently in the source text.

You can play around with the results, changing fonts, color schemes, the direction of the type (e.g. horizontal or vertical), and the overall layout. The results are surprising, and very often stunning.

I'm a word person - I not only love to use words, I enjoy finding just the right word, and am frequently peeved (friends say more than I should be) by the unnecessary use of words, or the incorrect use of words. (Don't even get me started on words like "digitalization" or "irregardless"!) So finding a web site that does nothing but render words into things of striking beauty is a real pleasure for me!

Just to give you an example, here is a word cloud - courtesy of http://www.wordle.net - using the text of this blog post!

Check it out!

Speak your mind…opinions welcome, wanted, and appreciated

SuDocQueen@evpl — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:11:00 GMT

Hello out there to everyone in EVPL blogland,

I have a dilemma that I could use your help with. Every year I sit down to plan a workshop on useful government documents and websites (more websites than actual documents now-a-days) and every year I get overwhelmed with the glut of information I could offer… Do I focus on how to find useful health and nutrition information? Or on how to find those interesting statistics you always hear quoted from the Census and Labor Departments? Or what about consumer safety information? Or how to navigate Social Security’s website? Or how about following legislation? The list can go on and on. So, I’m opening the floor to all of you, the people that the government is trying to reach with all of this information. What do you most want to know about? What do you need help discovering? Let me know how best to help you.

Research Blog : websites, internet

Word Clouds as Works of Art

Speak your mind…opinions welcome, wanted, and appreciated