“It’s only words and words are all I have, to take your heart away!” (Confused? Google it!)
Words have the potential to change the world (Obama?). Words give us hope, and confront us in times of despair. The digital age can’t live without words. We blog with words, text with them, write them down, send them in e-cards and often fall in love with them.
So what’s the big deal?
Oh, I just stumbled over a web app called Wordle. Wordle is a ‘toy’ which lets you create cool word clouds. It can create word clouds from any bunch of words or you can provide a RSS feed or a del.icio.us username and Wordle will automatically fetch the words, and give you a beautiful word cloud.
Guess what, you can use these word clouds anywhere, even on commercial publications. All creations are under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. So don’t be amazed if you see one on the Time Magazine Cover! (Read the FAQ for details)
Here is a Wordle I created with the words from this post. See the gallery for more!
Wordle interface is a Java applet, so you need to turn on Java Support on your browser. You can save the file as a PDF or take a print out directly from the applet. There is no option to save as an image file, but you can always take a screenshot. There are lots of options to play with, including fonts, colors, alignment, and some language filters. You can also save your Wordle into the public gallery. Consider reading the FAQ, if you need to learn some extra tricks.
Where can I use it? Any Ideas?
Since it’s a CC 3.0 product, you can use it almost anywhere! It can be the cover of your college magazine, maybe you can think of a greeting card, or include a Wordle on your business card. Your imagination is the limit! Try out Wordle now!
Thanks to @mistygirlph for sharing her Wordle with me (can’t find the link now) and letting me know of this cool app. Check out her blog Digigirl where she writes about her online life and other random thoughts.
I am a WordPress product developer and creator of Image Attributes Pro. I am passionate about solving problems and travelling the world.
Nice tool. Thanks for sharing it.
My pleasure!
Dont forget to checkout the randomize button when you are using this one! I just created some cool Clouds using that! Glad that you loved it!
just amazing. i would like to thank u for carrying out reviews of such great tools
Glad that you loved it, it took away a lot of my time, I think I am a bit addicted to Wordle, just cant stop creating new Wordle’s 😉
Love the post and thanks for the credits.. I think the reason we blog is because we do want to share our ideas and inspire others to create. Many of those who saw the Wordle got excited and saw many possibilities of creating their own stories and use it either as wall paper or place it in their blogs to tell others what they are all about. Thanks for sharing : )
Ah, you deserve the credits, no need to thank at all.
Yep, we blog so that we can share and get feedback. And to make Friends too, like you 🙂
I am gonna put a wordle on my card too!. Thanks for letting me know about this cool app!
I think they would look a bit messy on your site if you display as a sidebar widget.
i dont think its intended to bisplayed on sidebars.(this is not a widget). You can use it on the back of your business card, I am going to do it like that soon. Also my desktop has different kinds of wordle’s now.
Will definitely check this with one of my post and create the word clouds!
Thanks for sharing.
Its awesome, do share the word!
Arun,
This is such a cool tool. I could spend hours on your site reading all your posts but I have to work! Also thank you for all your help with my blog theme!
You are a generous guy.
🙂
Also what comment plugin are you using?, I love the set up.
Linda,
Nice to see you here 🙂 Tnks for the good words..
I am not using any comments plugin, whatever you see here, came with the theme!
Basically, I am a plugin minimalist, if I can skip a plugin with some code, I will do that!
Cheers,
Buddy I found a similar application like Wordle ! It is very cool ! You can create it on symbols too !
link
Thanks for sharing mate..
@All: Pradeep has written about an tool that can shape your image clods into standard shapes or letters. Pretty cool 🙂
Thanks for the credits mate ! 😀
I am the one who should be thanking you, because you added more resources to the post, thats the true essense of a blog, community participation 🙂
Hmm ! BTW till now you are my Google for doubts ! 🙂
So Cheers for that ! 🙂
That is quite interesting, Check out this wordle projcet it gives a new perspective of looking at the inuagural addresses (all of them). Its much easier to digest than reading them all, however looking at wordle may just intrigue one to read the whole address. You may even be suprised by some of them. There is a stark contrast between lincolns first and second.
http://www.governingdynamo.com/blog/2009/8/19/take-a-look-at-some-historic-american-rhetoric.html
Cool, thats a creative deployment of wordle, thanks for sharing. Wordle would look cool on business cards too, give it a try 🙂
Our team manually integrates Wordle Word Clouds with Google Analytics. Now in GA Version 5, (not released to everyone yet), there are integrated Word Clouds. Well, Google refers to them as Term Clouds but they are the same thing.
We still will use the manual integration method using Wordle when we want a beautiful word cloud for presentation purposes, but it is nice to have word clouds instantly available now.
Check out this post on why term clouds in Google Analytics are so special:
Term Clouds in Google Analytics Blog Post